.o 



6f"^o'^'-"'ir;>- 



^ Rf P 26 1901 ^-^! 

"--if'-'' ■^ivi r i\i T '■ '-'^^ 



.-L VT,X V'?f*V'- 







No.___^._25364 




LIS R^R, Y 




OF THE 




DEPARTMENT OF STATE, 






Alcove r^^fflfllUHm 




Shelf OKI^^^ 








vl^ 



HISTORY OF ENGLAND 



FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE DEATH 
OF QUEEN VICTORIA 



BENJAMIN f ERRY, Ph.R 

PBOFESSOR IN THE tTNIVBRSITY OF CHICAGO 



CHICAGO 

SCOTT, FORESMAN AND COMPANY 

1901 




^^ 



\^ 






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COPYRIGHT, 1901, BY 
SCOTT, FORESMAN AND COMPANY 



fli 




7 

54 



PRESS OF 

THE HENRY O. SHEPARD CO. 

CHICAGO, 




PEEFACE 

It is the purpose of tliis book to present in a simple and con- 
nected story the record of the founding, unfolding, and expansion 
of English nationality. In covering so vast a field an author must 
necessarily depend largely upon the work of others; yet in select- 
ing and organizing material, and in presenting well-worn themes 
from new points of view he may reasonably be expected to show 
some originality. He may also be expected to present with 
accuracy and simplicity the ordinary body of technical material 
which reader or student naturally looks for in a text-book on Eng- 
lish History. He ought also to present this material supported 
by such a body of narrative as shall impart some life to events 
described, so that the institutions of a people shall appear not as 
mere abstractions but as human things, and the great personages 
of their history not as the characters of an algebraic formula but 
as actual men and women. This, in a word, has been the aim of 
the present work. That it has not been attained in many respects, 
no one can be more conscious than the author himself. Only one 
who has gone through the labor entailed by such a task can appre- 
ciate the difficulty of attaining even ordinary accuracy in the state- 
ment of simple fact, to say nothing of properly balancing action 
and motive, or of placing events always in their proper proportions. 

In general, the plan of the book has been to weave in with a 
thread of political narrative some account of the constitutional 
and social development of the English people. In carrying out 
this plan conventional proportions have been sacrificed somewhat. 
Less space has been given to the petty squabbles of modern poli- 
ticians and the mere twaddle of court gossip but more to the 
development of early institutions ; less to the intricate processes 
of modern diplomacy, but more to Alfred and William I. and 
Henry II. and Edward I. The wars of Great Britain with 



IV PREFACE 

Afghans or Zulus or Chinese have been barely mentioned, but an 
entire chapter has been given to the Norman reduction of Eng- 
land. In order, also, that each chapter may present a distinct 
movement as a whole, the familiar arrangement by reigns has 
been abandoned for an arrangement by topics. 

ISTo attempt has been made to give a bibliography or even a 
complete body of notes. The few references which appear as 
footnotes are designed simply to show reader or student, who may 
not have the command of a large library, where he may easily 
reach a few of the most important authorities or sources. Every 
school library, however humble, should place within reach of its 
students such standard works as those connected with the names 
of Freeman, Greene, Eamsay, Stubbs, Taswell-Langmead, ISTor- 
gate, Lingard, Eonnd, Cunningham, Seebohm, and Uardiner, or 
such collections of sources as those connected with the names of 
Stubbs, Gee and Hardy, Prothero, and Gardiner. The JE^iglish 
Historical Revieio, also, will be found to be a mine of wealth to both 
student and teacher, and a complete file may still be easily obtained 
for a very moderate outlay. The Epoch Series will also be found 
invaluable in a small library. References have been given to these 
works rather than to the more formidable collections which are 
beyond the reach of most students, in the hope that the references 
will be actually used and thus prove of some practical value in the 
more extended study of important movements. Where time per- 
mits, such documents as Magna Charta^ The Bill of Rights, Tlie 
Act of Union, The Bill of Union, and the several Reform Bills of 
the nineteenth century should be carefully read and analyzed. 

In preparing the work I have levied heavily upon my old stu- 
dents, my colleagues of the Department of History in the Univer- 
sity of Chicago, and upon the members of my own family. Special 
credit is due to Dr. James F. Baldwin of Vassar College who has 
put his extensive knowledge of the English Feudal Period at my 
service by gathering for me the material upon the basis of which 
I have prepared the text ; he has also read the finished MS. of 
this part of the work and made many valuable criticisms and sug- 
gestions from which I have been glad to profit. For a similar 
service in the preparation of the MS. upon the period of the 



PREFACE - V 

Tudors and the Stnarts I am indebted to my colleague, Mr. Ralph 
0. H. Catterall, and upon the Hanoverian period to Professor 
Charles Truman Wyckoff of the Bradley Polytechnic Institute. 
I am greatly indebted, also, to my colleague, Dr. J. W. Thompson 
for assistance in reading the proof of the maps and for sugges- 
tions which have added greatly to their value; also to the un- 
wearied service of Miss Priscilla Grace Gilbert of Chicago in 
verifying quotations, the spelling of proper names, the correct- 
ness of dates, and in preparing the MS. for the printer. I wish 
also to mention the patient service and kindly interest of my 
colleague Professor George S. Goodspeed of the University of 
Chicago, and of my father, Mr. J. C. Terry of St. Paul, Minnesota, 
in reading the proof of the entire work. 

The University of Chicago, 
August 1, 1901. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Preface ...=. iii 

List of Maps = ....xi 

List of Tables .,...,„... xii 



PART I— TEUTONIC ENGLAND 
The Era of National, Foundation 

From Earliest Times to 1042 

CHAPTEB 

I. Introduction — Britain before the coming of the Teutons 1 

II. The Teutonic Settlement of Britain 18 

III. The Rival Confederacies of Teutonic Britain, and the Found- 

ing of the National Church 33 

IV. The Danish Wars^ Alfred the Great and the Founding of the 

English Kingdom 57 

V. The Reconquest of the Danelagh and the Expansion of the 
English Kingdom under the Great Kings of the House of 

Alfred 78 

VI. The Days of Dunstan; the Early English Kingdom passes 

Meridian ,... 93 

VII. The Decline of the Early English Kingdom; the Era of 

Danish Kings 106 



PART II— FEUDAL ENGLAND 

The Era of National Organization 

F7'0m 1042 to 1297 

I. The Shadow of the Norman 125 

II. The Conquest of England 145 

III. The Norman Reorganization of the Kingdom and the Intro- 
duction of Feudalism 167 

vii 



Vlll CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

IV. The Organization of the Kingdom Continued — The English 

Conquest of Normandy , 184 

V. Feudal Reaction and the Reconstitution of the Kingdom 203 

VI. The Growth of Popular Rights and the Loss of the Continental 

Possessions of the Angevins , 230 

VII. The Great Charter 249 

VIII. The Struggle for the Charter.. 266 

IX. The Chartered Confirmed 294 



PART III— NATIONAL ENGLAND 

The Era of National Awakening 

book i — social awakening 

Frojn 1297 to 1485 

I. The New Era; Edward I. and the Beginning of the Wars 
of Foreign Conquest — The Struggle of the Scots for 

Independence.. 317 

II. The Barons and the Royal Favorites — The Independence of 

Scotland Established 334 

III. Edward III. and the Opening of the Hundred Years' War 350 

IV. The Decline of Edward III. — Second Stage of Hundred Years' 

War 381 

V. The Peasant Revolt — The Attack of the King upon the 

Constitution 403 

VI. The Constitutional Kings of the House of Lancaster* — The 

Third Stage of the Hundred Years' War 427 

VII. The Last Stage of the Hundred Years' War— The Rivalry of 

Lancaster and York 450 

VIII. The Fall of York and the Close of the Dynastic Struggle 474 



BOOK II — RELIGIOUS REFORMATION 
From 1485 to 1603 

I. The Restoration of the Monarchy 494 

II. The Monarchy Supreme — The Administration of Wolsey 512 

III. The Ecclesiastical Revolt of England 528 

IV. The Progress of the Reform 548 

V. The Catholic Reaction 571 

VL Elizabeth; the Reform Established....... 587 

VII. Elizabeth; The Duel with Spain 606 



CONTENTS IX 

BOOK III — POLITICAL REVOLUTION 
From 1603 to 1689 
CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Breach Between King and Commons........................ 618 

II. The Era of Arbitrary Government ..,.,,... 647 

III. The Long Parliament and the Civil War 669 

IV. The Parliament and the Army , ........ 697 

V. Cromwell and the Protectorate ,,....... 722 

VI. The Stuart Restoration ........ 742 

VII. The Birth of the Whig Party ..,.,..........,.>,.. 760 

VIII. The Whig Revolution 782 



PART IV— IMPERIAL ENGLAND 
The Era of National Expansion 

From 16S9 to the Close of the 19th Century 

I. The Beginning of Party Rule in England and the Founding of 

British Foreign Policy 805 

IL The Completion of the Work of the Revolution • 836 

in. Walpole and the First Era of Whig Rule 861 

IV. The Pelhams and Pitt — The Ocean Empire Secured 885 

V. George III. — The First Period of Tory Rule and the Loss of 

the American Colonies 911 

VI. The Second Period of Tory Rule and the French Revolution... 941 

VII. The Eastern Question and the First Era of Reform 976 

VIII. Peel and the Dissolution of the Old Parties — The Crimean 

War — Palmerston and British Foreign Policy 1009 

IX. The Rise of the New Democracy — Gladstone and the Second 

Era of Reform 1037 

Index 1070 



LIST OF MAPS 

PAGE 

Teutonic Britain about 600 36 

Britain about 792 52 

Partition of England by Treaty of Wedmore 67 

England: Later Expansion of Wessex 80 

The Great Earldoms 118 

England: 1066-1068 145 

England and Scotland: 1066-1328...,. 184 

The Angevin Dominions...... 208 

Battle of Bannockburn 338 

Campaigns OF Hundred Years' War 350 

Battle of Crecy 365 

Battle op Poitiers 377 

Parts of France held by England after Treaty of Troyes 380 

France by Treaty of Bretigny 380 

General Map of Hundred Years' War 444 

Field of Agincourt 446 

The Wars of the Roses , 467 

England during Tudor Period 528 

Battle of Edgehill 684 

England during Civil Wars and Later Stuart Period 686 

Battle OF Marston Moor ........ 689 

Battle of Naseby ^ 694 

Ireland during Civil Wars and Later Stuart Period 710 

Scotland during Civil Wars and Later Stuart Period 712 

Battle op Dunbar 714 

Europe: 1713-14 836 

Battle of Blenheim or Hochstadt 840 

Battle OF Ramillies 844 

Spanish Netherlands....... 850 

Europe: 1789 , 950 

Europe: 1812 970 

Peninsular Campaigns of Wellesley 969 

Battle of Waterloo 973 

India 1028 

South Africa „... 1055 

xi 



LIST OF TABLES 

PAGE 

The Family of Alfred ....,„ , 57 

Rival English and Danish Royal Families 106 

The Dukes of Normandy. Early Connection with the Eng- 
lish Line 125 

Contemporaries of Edward the Confessor and William 1 166 

The Family op the Conqueror 167 

Families of Blois and Boulogne .,„.., 202 

Contemporaries of later Norman and Early Angevin Kings.. 229 

Family of Henry II 230 

Family of John Lackland 266 

Prominent Contemporaries of the Era of the Charter 293 

The English Constitution from the 11th to the 14th Century 316 

The Disputed Succession to the Scottish Throne 317 

Contemporaries of Edward I , 338 

The House of Lancaster 334 

The Valois Succession 350 

The Uncles of Edward III 351 

The Breton Succession 361 

Family of Edward III 381 

Contemporaries op Edward III 403 

The House of Lancaster o^.„. 427 

The Descent of the Rival House of York 450 

The Beauforts 474 

The Woodvilles 478 

The Younger Branch of the Nevilles— The De la Poles 494 

Prominent Characters of the Fifteenth Cent-jry 511 

Royal Descent of the Stafpords 512 

The Howards 548 

The Stuart Succession 587 

Prominent Contemporaries of the Later T dors 605 

Contemporaries of the Early Stuarts 696 

The Rival Lines of Stuart 805 

Contemporaries of the Later Stuarts 835 

Claimants to the Spanish Succession.. 836 

Descent op the House of Hanover 861 

Prominent British Statesmen of Modern Times Who Have 

Entered the Peerage...... 1069 

xii 



THE 

HISTORY OF ENGLAND 



PAET I— TEUTONIC ENGLAND 
THE ERA OF NATIONAL FOUNDATION 

FBOM EABLIEST TI2IES TO 1042 



CHAPTER I 



INTRODUCTION 
BEITAIN" BEPOEE THE COMING OF THE TEUTONS 

The entire area of the British Islands, roughly estimated, is 
about one hundred and twenty thousand square miles. Of this, 

England occupies less than one-half, about fifty-eight 
basifof' thousand square miles; not a very large country as 
"reotness modern states go. And yet, what has been lacking in 

size, has been more than made up by physical conditions, 
the most favorable to vigorous and prosperous national life. An 
insular position, midway in the north temperate zone, provides 
a climate tempered, yet invigorated by ocean breezes, and sup- 
plying that most urgent of agricultural needs, an abundant 
and regular rainfall. The soil is diversified with mountain, 
river, and lowland; and under intelligent tillage, is generally 
capable of great fertility. To resources of soil and favorable 
climatic conditions, is also to be added a vast wealth in minerals, 
by no means the least considerable of the national assets. 
Above all, and of the greatest political importance, the continuous 

1 



2 EAELY BRITAIN" 

boundary of ocean and channel, by protecting the people from 
foreign interference, has afforded opportunity for the develop- 
ment of unique political and social institutions, the normal 
unfolding of a healthy national life. The long seaboard, more- 
over, set with numerous and commodious harbors, has naturally 
suggested commerce and naval enterprise; offered a ready outlet 
for a population straitened by inflexible natural boundaries, but 
peculiarly energetic and adventure loving; and inspired those vast 
schemes of colonization, which have resulted in the founding of a 
Greater Britain beyond the seas. 

The population of the British Islands represents in about equal 

proportions the two great branches of the Aryan race, who have 

taken possession of central and western Europe, — the 

Thepopuia- Celts and the Teutons. To the first belong the Scots, 
tion of the ° ' 

British the Welsh, the Irish, and the Manx; to the second the 

Islands. ' ' ' 

English. The Celts, who were the first to come, 
found another race in occupation before them; these they 
did not exterminate, but absorbed. The Teutons in turn over- 
whelmed the Celts, and while they probably expelled them entirely 
from the eastern parts of the island, in the west and the north, 
Celt and Teuton rapidly blended, until to-day they so shade 
into each other that it is difficult to tell where Celtic Britain 
begins, or Teutonic Britain leaves ofl:. Other infusions of foreign 
blood from Denmark and Normandy, from Holland and France, 
liave since been received and lost in the larger population. Hence 
the population of the British Islands to-day is the result, partly, of 
a layer of population upon population, of race upon race; and partly 
of the fitting of population to population, like the pieces of a mosaic, 
yet so skillfully set, that the seams of division are lost, and colors 
the most violent in contrast shade into each other imperceptibly. 

The history of the people of the British Islands, therefore, 
begins far back beyond the Teutonic migration, when the first of 

these populations appeared. Then a huge peninsula 
ISi!!"^^ "'^ occupied the place of the present islands, and stretched 
History. 2LW&.J from the continent, far into the northern ocean. 
Its vast areas of woodland and marsh, broken here and there by 
open country, afforded a home for the bison and the mammoth, 



EAELIEST INHABITANTS OF BRITAIN" 3 

the reindeer and the wolf, and many other creatures, fierce and 

strange, which have long since disappeared. A people who are 

represented to-day by the Esquimaux, fished along the 

Paleolithic sedgy rivers, or tracked the wild beasts to their lairs 

Men. 

among the uplands. They are known to scientists as 
PaleolWiic or Old Stone men. Of these, two races have been 
distinguished. The oldest or first comers are called the River Drift 
men; the second comers, the Cave men. They represent the rudest 
form of human life. They made tools of flint which the River 
Drift men used without handles. They also protected their bodies 
from the extremes of the weather, much more violent then than 
now, with garments made of skins, rudely stitched together with the 
tendons of wild beasts. Though barbarians of the lowest type, they 
had some artistic sense, and attempted to ornament their weapons 
with rude imitations of the creatures which they were accustomed 
to slay in the chase. Yet they had no domestic animals ; knew 
nothing of spinning, or weaving ; and took no care of their dead. 
Existence must have been hard and precarious at best, affording 
little to develop the nobler instincts of human nature. 

Then untold centuries passed away; the great peninsula was 
severed from the mainland, and cut up into the group of islands 

which we know to-day; a climate better suited to 

The 

Neolithic primitive life also succeeded. The earlier races of 
men, the Old Stone men, or Paleolithic men, disap- 
peared; and a new race, the Neolithic.^ or Neio Stone men, suc- 
ceeded them. These people came from the southeast, and must 
have known something of sea craft. They brought with them over 
the narrow seas the domestic animals now so familiar, — the dog 
and the sheep, the ox, the goat, and the hog. They knew some- 
thing about spinning and weaving; and reverently laid away 
their dead in long chambers, built of flat stones, over which they 
heaped pear-shaped mounds of earth. These mounds are still to 
be seen in parts of the British Islands, and are known as long har- 
rows. From remains found in these barrows, we learn something 
of the appearance of the New Stone men; they were somewhat 
shorter than modern Europeans, with swarthy complexions, black 
curly hair, and, probably, dark eyes. The skulls, seen from 



4 EAELY BRITAIN" 

above, were oval; the faces, also oval; chins small, foreheads low, 
and cheek bones not prominent. Kindred peoples, commonly 
distinguished from later Neolithic men as Iberians or Ivernians, 
extended over all western and southern Europe. They dwelt 
among the Swiss lakes, the Lake Dtvellers; they were found upon 
the plains of Italy and in the mountains of ancient Etruria. 
Within historic times they appear in the Iberians of Spain and 
the modern Basques of the Pyrenees. Their blood is repre- 
sented to-day, probably, in most of the populations of western 
Europe. 

How long these men of the long barrow and the oval skull, the 
first Neolithic men, remained in undisputed possession of their 

island home is not known. But sometime, perhaps 
The Celts. 

twenty centuries before the beginning of the Chris- 
tian era, another people, also in the Neolithic stage, entered 
Europe, and slowly drifting westward, everywhere displaced the 
Iberians, breaking up their settlements, and either exterminating 
the inhabitants or absorbing them. These people were the Celts, 
the first great historic people of western Europe. They repre- 
sented a new race — the Aryan, now for the first time seen upon 
European soil. In marked contrast with the Iberians, the new- 
comers were tall and muscular, with fair skin, yellow hair, and 
fierce blue eyes. Their skulls were round, foreheads high and 
broad, and cheek bones prominent. They treated their dead with 
reverent care; but covered the grave with a round or bell-shaped 
barrow. Later, when bronze had begun to take the place of stone, 
they burned their dead. 

About the seventh or eighth century before the Christian 

era, these people had completed the conquest of Gaul, and were 

beginning to press into Britain. They did not come 

The Celtic o o j. j 

migration to all at once, but in successive waves of population, each 

B'K'ifjCl'lTh 

people pushing their predecessors on before them, to be 
crowded forward in turn by others who came after. In Caesar's 
day the last of these migrations had been completed; but so 
recently, that the last comers still kept up a close connection with 
their kindred of northern Gaul. During this long period the 
Celts also were passing through a very important transition, The 



THE CELTS O 

first to come had used stone weapons, similar to those of the 
Iberians; but the later comers had learned the secret of harden- 
ing copper with tin. They knew how to make huge bronze swords, 
and to protect their bodies with bronze armor and bronze shields. 
They had also learned to use the chariot in war, somewhat after 
the manner of the Greek nations of the Mediterranean. They 
must have been very formidable opponents, even to those of their 
own people who were already in Britain, and who now saw 
themselves despoiled of their choicest fields and finest hunting 
grounds. 

While many such waves of Celtic population broke upon the 
British Islands during this period, they represented only two 

divisions of the race, the Goidels or Gaels, and the 
Brimis"'^^ ^'>^^tons. The Gaels are represented to-day by the 

people of Ireland and the Scotch Highlands ; the Brit- 
ons, by the Welsh. It is thought, too, that strains of the old 
Iberian blood may be detected in the short stature, black hair, 
and dark eyes which prevail in certain parts of Ireland and Scot- ■ 
land. A map of the British Islands at the close of the Celtic 
migration would show in the hands of the Britons, middle and 
southern Britain from the Firth of Forth to the Channel and 
about one-half of Wales ; in the hands of the Goidels the modern 
Cornwall, southern Wales, with Anglesey and the adjoining penin- 
sula, the Scotch Highlands, Man, and Ireland. 

The Celts were an exceedingly interesting people, and the 
ardent researches of antiquarians have restored many of their 

customs. They understood agriculture, but their chief 
Customs wealth consisted in cattle. They soon discovered the 

mineral resources of their new home, for which, espe- 
cially the tin, they found a ready market among the peoples of the 
Mediterranean. Along the channels of this ancient commerce, 

the gold and silver coins of the Greek cities of the 

Coinage. 

south found their way into Britain, and the British Celts 
soon began to imitate them on their own account. Many of these 
imitations have been found, struck long before the era of Eoman 
occupation, and bear no slight testimony to the wealth and intelli- 
gence of the people who used them, the more remarkable when we 



6 EARLY BRITAIN 

remember that "Saxon England practically never had a gold corn- 
age, and that even Norman England never saw a gold coin struck 
nntil the year 1257."' 

The Celts had kings or tribal chieftains; but they seem to have 
been nnable to attain any permanent political union. Like Gaul in 
the time of Caesar, or Ireland in the time of the Plan- 
tagenets, Britain was cut up into scores of petty tribal 
families, each family held together by a theoretical kinship to a 
tribal chief. There were laws and interpreters of laws ; but beyond 
the tribal family there was no Judicial machinery by which inter- 
tribal quarrels might be adjusted, or offenses might be punished. 
Hence the tribal chieftains were ever quarreling among themselves, 
and never able to secure a lasting peace. 

Another institution peculiar to the Celts was the order of 

Dmids, a body of men of learning, -who were held in great honor, 

and were exempt from military service and taxation. 

T7i6 Dvuids 

They were the repositories of the learning of the 
age, which they received as oral traditions in a long and 
arduous tutelage. Like most primitive peoples, the Celts offered 
human sacrifices to their gods, and the Druids officiated in these 
grim rites. The famous Stonehenge, the remains of which are 
still to be seen in the great Salisbury plain, is generally thought to 
be a monument of such ancient British worship. Beside their 
sacerdotal functions, the Druids were also professional jurists; 
"they could give legal advice, enunciate the law, act as arbiters, 
but could not enforce a decree." They existed both in Gaul and 
Britain, and, if the later Irish hrelions or judges may be regarded 
as representatives of an ancient order, probably in Ireland as well. 
The authentic record of Celtic Britain begins with the perma- 
nent Eoman occupation, about the middle of the first century of the 
Christian era. Some three centuries earlier, however, 
of^Pvth.ms' Pytheas, a savant of the Greek city of Marseilles, was sent 
a^out325 Q^^f; ]3y w^Q merchants of. his city to open up new trade 
relations with the people of the north coast of Europe. 
The expedition was successful, and much useful information 
was no doubt brought back to the Mediterranean cities ; but unfor- 

* Ramsay, Foundations of England, I, p. 33. 



A. D. 43] CAESAR llf BRITAIN ' 7 

innately the original record left by the explorer has been lost, and 
all that remain are a few stray references or allusions on the pages 

of his critics. When Caesar was in Gaul, he also made 
Britain, B.C. two expeditions to the island; but apparently he had no 

serious thought of conquest at the time, and proposed 
little more than a reconnoissance in force. His first expedition 
was unmistakably a failure. On his second expedition he remained 
two months, advancing beyond the Thames, and breaking up a 
confederacy of tribes which the chieftain Cassivellaunus had 
brought together to resist him. He also exacted a promise of 
tribute; but there is no evidence that a tribute was ever collected or 
that any effort was made by the Romans at this time to secure a 
permanent footing on the island. They were soon too busy with 
their own domestic affairs to give the distant Britons further 
attention, and left them to sink again into the oblivion which for 
so many centuries had hidden their island from the eyes of civilized 
Europe; nor v/as it until the reign of Claudius, ninety-seven 
years later, that the Eomans seriously undertook to reduce the 
Britons, or to establish their power beyond the Channel. Here 
the recorded history of Britain begins. 

A great king, Cunobelinus, the "Cymbeline" of Shakespeare, 
had closed a long and prosperous reign in eastern Britain. His 

capital was at Camulodunum, among the Trinobantes, 
ofiZ^"^^ the site of the modern Colchester. Both north and 
^Chmdius"'^ south, the neighboring tribes had yielded to his sway. 

Upon his death, however, his kingdom broke up; the 
tribes were embroiled in a bloody civil war, and soon exiled chief- 
tains began to appear at the court of Claudius, only too ready to 
sign away questionable claims to paper thrones, in order to secure 
the aid of the emperor in avenging their wrongs. Claudius deter- 
mined to interfere upon pretext of the 'alliance and friendship' of 
Eome with these dispossessed chieftains. He was, moreover, sadly 
in need of a military reputation, while the chronic disorder of the 
island promised an easy conquest — much easier than the conquest 
of the incorrigible Germans, upon whom Augustus had spent 
the whole strength of the empire to little purpose. 

Accordingly, in the summer of the year 43 A. D., Claudius sent 



8 EAELT BKITAIN 

forward an able general, Anliis Plautius, with an armament, number- 
ing, both legionaries and auxiliaries, about forty thousand men. The 

Britons were able to make no effective resistance to this 
of^Auh^^^* force, and in a few weeks the lands of the Cantii, the 
piauttm, region of the later Kent and Sussex, were overrun. 

So glowing were the accounts returned of the 
achievements of Eoman prowess, that Claudius ventured to expose 
his sacred person by appearing among the legionaries, and was 
present when the army crossed the Thames and took possession of 
Camulodunum. After sixteen days he returned to Eome to enjoy 
his much-needed triumph, and to add a "Britannicus" to the 
calendar of Eoman national heroes, Aulus Plautius remained 
behind to complete the work of conquest, and within four years the 
most of Eoman Britain was secured. Colonists also flocked into 
the island, and in a short time the Eomanizing of the new provinces 
was seriously under way. 

Other governors followed Aulus Plautius. There was much hard 
fighting on the borders ; but for eighteen years the Eoman advance 

failed to pass the Severn, or the Humber. Within these 
Romanizing lines, however, there were many important changes. 
begun— Londinium, the modern London, was rising rapidly to 

be the "commercial center of the island." From the 
southern ports the inevitable Eoman roads converged upon her 
gates. A great road led away to Glevum (Gloucester) , the Eoman 
outpost on the Severn. The famous Watling Street stretched 
away to Uriconium (Wroxeter), and Deva (Chester), the outpost 
of Eome in the northwest. Other highways, the Icknield Street, 
the Ermine Street, and the Fosse-way, then, or soon after, were 
laid down to connect the remote corners of the province with the 
interior and with each other. These roads were designed primarily 
for military purposes ; but commerce was quick to take advantage 
of the easy and safe communication offered by solid roadbeds and 
continuous lines of depots and Avatch-stations ; and very soon, over 
the Eoman road, as along the line of the modern railroad, the subtle 
influences of civilization began to pass outward in ever-increasing 
volume, from the older cities of the coast into the western and 
northern wilderness. 



61] BOADICEA 9 

But how fared it with the conquered people during these eight- 
een years? The Celtic nature is not averse to civilization ; but it 
was the peculiar misfortune of the British Celts, as with 
of the their kinsmen of Ireland, to come first in contact with 

civilization on its most unlovely side. Under such 
emperors as Claudius and Nero, Eoman public service was at its 
worst. Officials were shamelessly corrupt, and did not hesitate to 
use their public authority to extort money from the defenseless 
provincials for their own uses. Troops of private speculators, 
brokers and money-lenders, had also followed the army, and 
"offered fatal facilities to needy chiefs," Conscriptions, taxation, 
and requisitions of all sorts, enforced by punishments which 
the Britons thought fit only for slaves, were the order of 
the day. 

Such blind and stupid oppression of a brave people, who, though 
conquered, still retained in their hands unlimited power for mis- 
chief, could have but one result. In the year 61, the 
BoadiJea,6i. Iceni, a vassal tribe who dwelt in the region of the pres- 
ent Norfolk, rose under the leadership of their widowed 
queen, the famous Boadicea, and, joined by the Trinobantes and 
other neighbors to the south, made a desperate effort to destroy 
the foreigners and break the Eoman yoke. In the first tide of 
revolutionary ardor the insurrection bore all before it. The recently 
established colony at Camulodunum was overwhelmed. Yeru- 
lamium, the modern St. Albans, and London were stormed and 
sacked. Frightful massacres attended these successes; seventy 
thousand persons, it was said, perished. The nearest legion, the 
Ninth, hastened to the scene of the revolt, but only to be swept 
away in the flood. Help, hov/ever, was not far off. Suetonius Paul- 
linus, the governor, was already returning from the distant Mona, 
the later Anglesey, wliere he had been engaged in an attempt upon 
the warlike Ordovices. He hastened his march in the hope of 
saving London; but when he found that he was too late, he fell 
back to a strong position somewhere on the line of the Thames, 
and there awaited the advance of the enemy. Boadicea led the 
charge in her war chariot ; her people supported her with great spirit, 
but their valor was no match for the dogged endurance of the 



10 EAELY BRITAIN 

Eomans. After the first wild and furious onslaught, their energies 
were soon spent, and they were easily swept away before a well 
timed counter charge of the legionaries. Boadicea ended her life 
with poison. Southern Britain was not only conquered, but 
crushed ; and never again disputed the Eoman supremacy. Yet 
the rising was not without its lesson to the Eomans; and when 
the overthrow of the last of the Claudian Caesars and the subse- 
quent establishment of the Flavians, afforded an opportunity for a 
change in the policy of the provincial administration, the Britons 
were among the first to share the benefit of the new order. The ' 
governors who now came out to the province were good men, who 
sought to reconcile the people to the Eoman rule by removing the 
causes of irritation. 

Among the new governors was the famous Agricola, immor- 
talized by the pen of his son-in-law, the historian Tacitus. He 
came to Britain in the year 78, and at once under- 
Britaiih^^^ took the reduction of the wild tribes of the island, who 
''*"*^" had not yet recognized the Eoman rule. In three years, 

he had overrun the western highlands, the later Wales; then, 
turning north, he crossed the Humber and advanced to the line of 
the Clyde and the Forth. It took two years more to clear the 
lowlands, and in the summer of 84 he entered the mountain fast- 
nesses of the Caledonians, as the Picts were then called, the only 
people who still defied the authority of Eome in Britain. The 
difficulties which confronted the Eomans in the unaccustomed 
mountain warfare were serious, but the Caledonians greatly sim- 
plified the task by massing their forces at a place known as Mons 
Graupius,^ where Agricola defeated them in a single pitched battle. 
If we may believe his biographer, Agricola left ten thousand of 
their warriors dead upon the field. It was one of the 

First most brilliant victories which Eoman arms had won 

circumnavi- 
gation of the since the day of the great Caesar. Yet it was impossible 

to hold or fortify the Highlands, or secure the fruits of 

victory by permanent possession, and Agricola was forced to 

return to the province. The fleet, however, he sent forward to 

1 It is now generally agreed that Mons Graupius is not to be identified 
with the Grampian Hills. 



84] EOMAE^ CIVILIZATION" 11 

explore the northern coast. They turned the cape, and discovering 
the Orkneys, returned by way of the Irish Sea and the Channel to 
their winter station. They were the first representatives of civiliza- 
tion to circumnavigate the island. 

Agricola, in the meantime, was meditating great things for his 
next campaign. He proposed, in short, the complete reduction, not 
^ ,, only of the people of the Highlands, but of the Irish 

Recall of ^ i n ^ n 

Agricola, Gaels as well. But the suspicious Domitian was already 
jealous of the growing fame of his brilliant lieutenant, 
and determined to recall him, leaving three legions in the island, 
sufficient for a guard, but not sufficient to tempt another lieuten- 
ant to a career of conquest. 

The Koman advance in Britain now ceased for a season. The 
government, in accordance with a policy, deliberately adopted, 
sought henceforth not to make new conquests, but to 
medefensive. ^ecure the most practicable military frontier. The 
northern Gaels kept up their old active hostility, and 
again and again swept into the Lowlands; the Brigantes, who dwelt 
south of the Tyne, also gave the unfortunate Mnth Legion which 
was stationed at York, much hard work; yet Rome persisted in 
her defensive policy. Hadrian, who was a thrifty, business-like 
emperor, decided that the conquests of Agricola north of the Tyne 
were not worth the trouble which it cost to hold them, and aban- 
doning all this region, withdrew south of the Tyne and the Sol way; 

_ ,, marking the new frontier by a permanent fortification. 

Wall of 1 • n 1 • •' i- ' 

A7itonimis, the remains of which are still to be seen.^ Antoninus 

138, 

Pius, who succeeded Hadrian in 138, however, advanced 
again to the old frontier, connected the Clyde and the Forth with a 
second line of fortifications, and made the intervening country once 
more Eoman territory. This practically ended the Roman advance. 

One hundred and twenty-four years after the battle of 
^mrm^i ^^o^s Graupius, Septimius Severus once more took up 
m-2ii!'' *^® aggressive policy of Agricola, and made a last 

attempt to complete the conquest of the island. But 

1 For description of the famous walls of Hadrian and his successors, 
see Mommsen, Tlie Provinces of the Roman Empire I, pp. 200-205; and 
Ramsay, Foundations of England I, pp. 75-79. 



12 EARLY 'BRITAIN 

he died before lie had hardly begun his work. .His successors were 
too deeply occupied at home with military mutinies and barbaric 
inroads, to burden themselves with the old quarrel with the High- 
land Gaels. 

After the death of Septimius Severus, Roman historians have 
little to say of Britain for nearly a hundred years ; a fact which may 
be taken to indicate that the history of the country was unevent- 
ful, and hence peaceful. Agricola had begun to train the British 
chieftains in the use of Latin. He had also introduced the luxuries 
of the bath and the banquet. He gave liberally for the erection of 
temples and courthouses, and introduced more durable 
OivUizatioii dwellings to take the place of the huts of clay and thatch. 

in Britain. • » -n » i -r-. 

JNumerous remains of villas of the Roman type testify 
to the extent to which the Britons profited by these lessons. Some 
of these villas must have been of considerable magnificence for private 
dwellings. Agriculture remained the common flourishing industry 
of the island; in the time of Probus, Britain sent large shipments 
of grain to Italy. Additions were also made to the flora and fauna 
of the island; the chestnut and the walnut, the elm and the poplar, 
the rabbit and the fallow deer, are supposed to date from this era. 
Bede mentions mines of lead, iron, and coal; and in more recent 
times numerous discoveries of Roman pig iron testify to the actual 
output of these mines. Little, however, is known of other forms 
of native industry. The Romans also brought in many customs 
connected with the occupation of the soil, which scholars, in some 
quarters at least, are beginning to think survived the later Teutonic 
migration, and possibly formed no inconsiderable element in pre- 
paring tlie foundation of the later medieval social system in 
Britain, as well as in other parts of the west. It must not be for- 
gotten, however, that the Roman occupation of Britain was 
primarily a military occuj)ation. A military purpose dictated 

the laying down of the famous roads and the planting 
Naiure% ^^ Roman colonies. There is no evidence, moreover, 
OccunZion ^^^^ there ever existed in Britain any such municipal 

life as existed in Gaul or Spain; or that beyond the 
four colonies, Camulodunum (Colchester), Glevum (Gloucester), 
Eboracum (York), and Lindum (Lincoln), any other cities received 



300] PLATSTTIISTG OF CHRISTIANITY 13 

the municipal franchise. The towns which the Eomans occupied, 
were really great camps or forts, and remained so down to the 
coming of the Teutons. The upper classes of the Britons, 
who were brought into direct contact with the Eoman officials, 
spoke Latin, adopted Latin names, and aped Italian manners; but 
outside of the Eoman camp cities, and beyond the line of the 
Eoman roads, the people remained still Celtic, Latin a foreign 
tongue, and the Eoman a stranger. 

First and last, therefore, the relations of the Eomans to Britain 

were like those of the English to India — essentially a military 

occupation of a foreign country inhabited by a subject 

Results of \ ,. T .,^ . ., -^ ,, ^^-^ ^ ^ 

Roman population — and with similar results. JNo new and 

powerful nationality rose from the wreck of the old 
independent British states. Instead, even "the remembrance of 
past independence" faded away; the sense of nationality disap- 
peared; individuality was destroyed; all capacity for self-help was 
stifled in the languor and hopeless apathy, generated by a system 
of paternalism, which insisted upon doing everything for its 
dependents, and sternly frowned down every effort at self-help. 
Even at its best, the Eoman system of government was burdensome 
and oppressive. In Britain it was never at its best. Though the 
better emperors checked the plundering instincts of their subordi- 
nates, the government itself was always the most grievous plun- 
derer, from whose exactions there was no redress. It was always 
needy, and even when it meant well, seemed never able to stay its 
hand. 

One ray of light there is, however, which comes to us out of 
the deep gloom of these centuries of Eoman military rule in Britain. 

It comes, however, not from Eome or Eoman institu- 
Thc vlant- 
ing of tions, but from the despised and forbidden religion of 

the Christian. The time, and even the traditions, of 
the early conquests of Christianity in this Land's End of the 
ancient world, have been forgotten ; evidence positive that, as in 
the time of the apostles, the consolations of the Gospel here also 
came first to the humble poor. The progress of Christianity, how- 
ever, when once planted in Britain, must have been very rapid. 
When Tertullian wrote in the early third century, he could claim 



14 EAELT BEITAIN 

the Britons as a Christian people. In the year 314 the British 
church was recognized as a part of the great western brotherhood 
of churches, and was represented by three of her bishops at the 
Council of Aries. 

If we know little of the founding of British Christianity, we 
know hardly more of the British church. In the year 359 its 
bishops were conspicuous for their poverty among the prosperous 

ecclesiastics who gathered at the Council of Eimini, 
'ciiiircii^^^^ and were compelled to accept alms at the hand of the 

emperor. With their poverty, the British churches 
seem also to have united a sturdy orthodoxy, and through all the 
controversies which distracted the wealthy eastern churches of this 
period, adhered loyally to the teachings of Athanasius. 

Three noted names have come down to us from the British 
church — Pelagius, Ninian, and Patricius, the last, better known 

as St. Patrick. But valuable as these lives are in 
Threemted giving US types of British Christianity, they reveal little 
c)lm-ch^^ of the British church itself. Pelagius, the arch heretic, 

lived and wrote in Italy and Palestine; Mnian and 
Patrick toiled among the Gaels of the north and west — the pioneer 
missionaries of Scotland and Ireland. 

Of the political history of Britain, something more is known. 
When Diocletian and Constantino reorganized the empire, Britain 

was constituted one of the six dioceses of the great 
izationof Western Praefecture, and placed under its own vicar, 
a part of or vice prefect, with the seat of government at York. 

The region south of Hadrian's Wall was further sub- 
divided into four provinces, the exact boundaries of which are not 
known. In general, however, these provinces lay as follows : Britan- 
nia Prima, south of the Thames; Britannia Secunda, west of 
the Severn ; Flavia Caesariensis^ between the Thames and the Hum- 
ber; dindi Maxima Caesariensis, between the Humber and Hadrian's 
Wall. Later, the region within the walls was known as Valentia, 
and is sometimes, although improperly, designated as a province. 
Each province was governed by a pi'aeses, or president, whose 
functions were entirely civil, and distinct from those of the three 
great military officials \vho directed the defense of the island. Of 



294] EARLY BARBARIAlSr INVADERS 15 

these latter the Count of the Saxon shore commanded the army 
which guarded the eastern coast from the Wash to the Isle of 

Wight, cantoned in nine permanent coast camps. Some- 
otnciaisin timcs the littoral Count was assisted also by a fleet of 

considerable strength. The famous Carausius was 
one of these counts, who by the support of his fleet was able to 
throw off his allegiance to the emperor and establish himself in 
Carausiiis Britain as a sort of pirate emperor, where he maintained 
287-204. iiig s^ay for nearly eight years. His career is important 

as the first hint of the possibilities of Britain as a base for a great 
naval power. The Duke of the tcvo Britains commanded the legions 
stationed at Caerleon, Chester, and York. A third officer was 
the Count of Britain, who seems to have been commander-in- 
chief. 

The disposition of these forces was dictated by new dangers 
which began to threaten the existence of Roman Britain as 

early as the third century. Bands of wild Scots, Gaels 

Early 

Barharw who then dwelt on the east coast of Ireland,, crossed 

the Irish Sea, and uniting with other hordes of Gaels 
from the Highlands, the old Caledonians, descended upon the 
lands between the Clyde and the Severn, and after burning and 
The Scots ravaging the country, retired again with troops of 
anciPicts. captives and herds of cattle. A still greater danger 
threatened the Eoman Britons in the southeast. The successes 
of Probus had cut off the Franks and other neighboring con- 
federations from their long-accustomed predatory raids by land. 
The sea, however, still lay open, and along this "swan road of 
the water" small piratical fleets soon began to find their way 

westward and descend upon the shores of Britain. 

The Saxons, whose terrible name appears first upon 
Eoman annals about the year 160, were the most troublesome of 
these marauders. In the third century they had extended over all 
the region between the lower Elbe and the land of the Franks, and 
began seriously to menace the coasts of Britain and northern 
Gaul. 

During the long-continued helplessness of the period of the 
Barrack emperors, Britain suffered much from the robbers who 



16 EARLY BRITAIN" 

thus swept down upon her from the northern mountains and the two 
seas. Carausins met the pirates on their own element, and during 
„ , his eight years' reign once more gave tlie land peace. 

Roman The emperors of the House of Constantine continued 

power m -t 

Britain. j^ig work, and for fifty years preserved the tranquillity 
of the country. But after this family of princes had passed away, 
with barbaric hordes marching and countermarching the plains of 
Moesia and Gaul and Italy, with revolting generals sup- 
ported by mutinous legions hatching into rival emperors, 
the legitimate emperors were no longer able to give thought to a 
remote outlying province like Britain. If an emperor honestly sought 
to protect his distant subjects, and sent out from his scanty legions 
at home a military force sufficient to help them, the chances were that 
the soldiers, taking advantage of their remoteness from the capital, 
would make an emperor of some favorite officer or provincial gover- 
nor, and force him to lead them back again, in order to tilt with the 
already distracted occupant of the throne. Emperor-making was far 
more profitable than fighting barbarians on the lonely heaths of the 
north. Between the years 383 and 407 this very thing happened 
twice ; when the entire British garrison crossed the Channel, and with 
their mushroom emperor plunged into the confusion of strife and 
intrigue which marked the collapse of Roman authority in Gaul. 
The Picts and Scots and Saxons were also quick to take advantage 
of the defenseless condition of the Provincials, and from all sides 
began to pour into the country. A wild panic seized the people; 
all who could, the most of the Roman population and the wealthier 
class of the Britons, left the island and withdrew to the continent. 
The tillers of the soil, the slave and the serf, the poor, the artisans 
and mechanics only were left. All the conservative elements of 
society, the so-called "respectable elements," the men who made 
the laws and supported the courts, were gone. Civil authority dis- 
appeared; the country raj)idly reverted to barbarism and anarchy. 
A crop of guerrilla kings, the representatives of violence and dis- 
order, sprang up in the place of the lapsed civil order, plun- 
dering the people and warring upon each other whenever the 
barbarians afforded them a respite. The wail of the British 
provincials reached the ears of the feeble Honorius behind the 



414] END OF KOMAN POWEE 17 

lagoons of Eavenna. But he had no more troops to send, and bade 
the Britons take care of themselves. Once again, when thirty years 
later the fame of the mighty Aetius reached the island, a second 
cry for help was sent out from this "Algiers of the ancient empire." 
'The barbarians drive us back into the sea,' the people moaned; 
'the sea drives us back upon the barbarians. We must die by the 
sword or drown ; we have none to help us. ' And so Britain drifted 
away from the nerveless hand that could no longer retain its grasp, 
and disappeared in the deep night of the fifth century. 



CHAPTER II 

THE TEUTOiiTIC SETTLEMENT OF BKITAIIST 

The first chapter of British history ends in the wild con- 
fusion which followed the dejDartnre of the Roman legionaries. 

Of the next two centuries, known as the era of the 
Changes in Anglo- Saxon conquest, few records have survived to 
thewm- '^ furnish a basis for the compilation of an authentic 
theRomfois. history. Yet violent and far-reaching changes are in 

progress, and when the curtain rises upon the second 
act of the drama the old stage setting has been entirely changed. 
Where were populous cities, or swelling grain fields, are now only 
dreary wastes of marsh and fen, or solemn forests of beech and 
oak. A new people of strange tongue, and uncouth manners, living 
the simple life of the wilderness, hunt along grass-grown Eoman 
roads, or camp among the silent ruins of villa or temple. There 
are Britons still to be found in the western part of the island, who 
speak the Celtic tongue and live under the strange old Celtic laws, 
but the Eoman Britons, with all that Rome had given them, have 
disappeared. 

The new-comers were the so-called Anglo-Saxons, the ancestors of 
the present English people. They were Germans, of pure Teutonic 

stock, and represented the second great wave of Aryan 
Ex^ansion^ population to break over western Europe. When Pytheas 
Ew-o^c^^'^^'^ entered the northern seas this second group of Aryan 

peoples had reached the Elbe and behind it were holding 
the entire southern Baltic basin; but when Caesar began his career 
in Gaul, two hundred and seventy years later, they had long since 
passed the Elbe, and were crowding upon the Celtic populations on 
the west bank of the Rhine. The interposition of Rome and the 
establishment of the Rhine as the eastern boundary of her trans- 
alpine empire, at once checked the Germanic advance, but the 
crowding of populations upon the Rhine frontier did not cease, 

18 



450] EAKLIEST SETTLEMENTS OF GERMANS IN BRITAIN 19 

and Nvhen at last, after five hundred years, the decline of Eoman 
civilizatiou made it impossible longer to hold the outer defenses 
of the empire, Teutonic hordes began again to stream across the 
boundary river and within a generation had overwhelmed all west- 
ern Europe, permanently establishing themselves among the ruins 
of the great cities of the west and south. 

The Teutons who settled in Britain belonged to a group of 

tribes who had long occupied lands on the lower Elbe and along 

the Danish peninsula. Of these the Angles were known 

First to Tacitus; and although the Saxons do not appear 

mention of 5 & i r 

Angies^and jjy name until later, it is not unlikely that they were 

represented among the peoples who figured in the 
ancient war of liberation when the Germans who dw^elt between 
the Ehine and the Elbe rose against the generals of Augustus, 
and threw off the Roman yoke. Just when the Germans of 
the lower Elbe began to form permanent settlements in Brit- 
ain is not known; but the time apparently was much earlier 

than that assigned by the traditional accounts of 
nent settle- the conquest. The eastern coasts of lower Britain 
saxmis. offered an easy approach to their shallow barks, and 

it is not unlikely that even before the withdrawal of 
the Eomans they had made a permanent lodgment upon the coast 
of modern Essex, the "Saxon Shore." ISTew arrivals continued to 
swell the ranks of the first comers, and with the increasing feeble- 
ness of the defense steadily pushed their way westward, taking up 
land as they needed it, until at last they reached the neighborhood 
of London. 

Soon after the settlement of the "Saxon Shore," other bands 
also succeeded in making a lodgment on the southern shore of the 

Thames mouth. According to later traditions these 

Tlic Jutes. 

Tiic ' people belonged to the Jtites, a tribe dwelling on the 
Kent, Danish peninsula, and came under two war chiefs or 

ealdormen, Hengist and Horsa, who had been invited 
by the Britons to assist them against their old hereditary foes the 
Picts. These Jutes proved to be very troublesome allies, and, like 
their kindred on the north bank of the Thames, proceeded to take 
land as they needed it, pushing south and west, forcing the south- 



20 THE TEUTONIC SETTLEMENT OF BRITAIN 

ern Britons back upon London, and finally taking possession of the 
entire peninsula of the ancient Cantii. The name of the dispos- 
sessed Britons reappeared in the Caoihvoyra, or men of Kent ; but 
the old Durovernuin gave way to Cantivarahyrig (Can- 

waraandthe terbury) . Other tribes of Jutes, represented in the 
Meayiwara in ^ , tt^., , -, nr ;• i i ii 

Wight and later Wilmvara and Meanwara, continued along the 
southern coast until they came to the sheltered waters 
about Portsmouth, where they took possession of the Isle of Wight 
and the mainland opposite, and extended their conquests over a 
large part of the modern county of Hampshire. The Saxons also 
seem to have found their way into the Channel at an early date, 
and, pushing into the rivers and estuaries which were at that time 
more numerous on these coasts than now, began a series of settle- 
ments south of the great forest of Anderida, and probably 
extended even west of the Wihtwara. 

The Britons of the south did not surrender their homes 

graciously to these strangers. There are grim traditions of attacks 

and counter attacks, of fierce battles, of whole cities 

The first 

period'of massacred in the fury of storm, of a wave of fire which 



surged across the island from sea to sea, nor ceased 
its fury until it had bathed its flames in the western ocean ; then 
followed a long period of truce, when the Germans retired to the 
coast again and rested on their arms, while the Britons wasted 
their strength and their resources in riotous living and civil brawls. 
With the opening of the new century, the activities of the 
Saxons began anew. Passing up the left bank of the Thames they 

overran the regions occupied by the modern counties of 
tiie middle Middlesex and Hertfordshire; then passing the Chil- 

TTtctYfics 

terns they added the modern Buckinghamshire, Oxford- 
shire, and Northamptonshire, and turning south crossed the 
Thames and began the conquest of Berkshire. This region west 
of the Chilterns, the middle Thames country, was the original land 
of the West Saxons, the "geographical complement" of the lands 
east of the Chilterns, which now by contrast began to be known 
as the land of the East Saxons.^ 

^ See English Historical Revieui, Oct. 1898, p. 671. Art. by Henry H. 
Haworth, and also the reply by W. H. Stevenson in Revieiv of Jan. 1899. 



ANGLES IN THE NOETH 21 

When the Saxons began the conquest of the broad lowlands 
which to-day stretch away from the suburbs of London to the 
southwest, the modern Surrey, the '.'South Kingdom," is not 
known, but it is fair to suppose that this region, at least the parts 
north of the forest of Anderida, was conquered not by the Saxons 
who had settled on the sonthern coast, but by the bands who had 
overrun the adjacent country across the Thames. Possibly the 
conquest belongs to the later era when West Saxon and Cantwara 
met in deadly struggle for supremacy south of the Thames. 

The beginnings of the Anglian settlements are as obscure as those 
of the Saxons. The Angles do not seem to have been very active 

until the sixth century, when coasting along the shores 
The A.nciles o o 

Mi. tM east of the aiicient Frisia in the track of the Saxons, and pass- 
ing by the Thames mouth their fleets first found shelter 
among the islands and estuaries on the coast of East Anglia, 
where two distinct settlements may be traced in the familiar 
Northfolk and Southfolk. The wild Fen country and the deep 
indentations of the Wash, however, afforded no such easy egress 
to the west as had invited the Saxons to the conquest of the 
Thames basin. Later comers, therefore, according to tradition 
coming in overwhelming numbers, and including first and last 
a great part of the nation of the Angles,^ passed on up the coast 
until they reached the broad mouth of the Humber. At this time 
the northern provinces of Eoman Britain must have been in some 
such condition as northern Italy on the eve of the Lombard migra- 
tion. A century of Pictish inroads, followed by years of famine 
and pestilence, had left the land depopulated and desolate.^ No 
echoes of any great battles, no traditions of long and bitter strife, 
such as linger about the Saxon advance in the south, have ever 
reached us from this northern conquest. If any of the original 

^ A part of the Angles were left behind to be finally merged in the • 
Thuringians. 

2 An official report of the Mayor of Santa Clara County in Cuba showed 
that in only three years, 1896, 1897, 1898, 80 per cent of the population had 
perished. Conceive this state of affairs lasting for a hundred years, and 
we have some idea of the condition of the northern part of the Roman 
provinces of Britain when the Angles came. And we may also under- 
stand why there was so little show of resistance. 



22 THE TEUTOIfIC SETTLEMENT OE BRITAIN 

population had survived the earlier Pictish inroads, they were too 
feeble to resist the overwhelming numbers of the new invaders. 
Two tribes, later known as Deirans and Bernicians, turned north 
and took possession of the lands between the Humber and the 
Firth of Forth. Other tribes turned south, and advancing along 
the basin of the Trent soon appeared far down in mid-Britain, 
leaving to the east, between the lower Trent and the Wash, 
the modern Lincolnshire, the Gainas and the Lindiswara. Still 
farther to the southeast, the Girwas found their way into the Fen 
country, while other Anglian communities took up their station 
about the later Leicester, where they appear as Middle Angles; 
others still, the South Angles, appeared among the hills of North- 
ampton, where they began to encroach upon the earlier settlements 
of the West Saxons. Other tribes worked their way out of the 
Trent basin to the west, where they appear as North Angles and 
West Angles. 

It is perhaps to the era when the Angles were pushing rapidly 
to the south that we are to ascribe the advance of the West Saxons 
into the Severn country. Apparently they could not 
of the ^ hold their own against the increasing pressure of the 

Angles upon their northern borders, and began to seek a 
new extension of territory to the west and south, overrunning the 
later Wiltshire, Dorsetshire, and eastern Somersetshire. It is 
probable also that at this time, or soon after, there occurred the 
direct southward advance of the West Saxons, crossing the lower 
Thames, expelling the Jutes of Kent from Surrey and Sussex, and 
conquering the kindred Meanwara of Hampshire, and the Wihtwara 
of Wight. 

This last movement is associated by tradition with the name of 
Ceawlin, the first really authentic king of the West Saxons, and 
it is not improbable that the great part of these later 
560^590^^' conquests were carried on by him or his immediate pred- 
ecessors. It is also not unlikely that out of the mili- 
tary need of the hour there arose the first great confederation of 
Teutonic tribes in Britain, At one time Ceawlin appears at war 
with the young king Ethelbert of Kent, when he drives in the 
western outposts of the Cantwara in Surrey and Sussex. Again 



577-603] ~ ETHELFRID THE DEVASTATOR 23 

he appears in the Isle of Wight, overthrowing the Wihtwara, pur- 
suing their kings through the country of the Meanwara, and adding 
their lands to his dominions; probably forcing the Jutes of Wight 
and Hampshire to join the West Saxon confederation. Again, he 
appears in the valley of the Severn, hunting the Britons out of the 
country, and in 577 winning the decisive victory of Deorham, The 
old cities of Bath, Gloucester, and Cirencester fell to the spoil of 
war, and their blackened ruins lay for centuries to tell of the 
furious valor of Ceawlin. The victory of Deorham gave the West 
Saxons the valley of the Severn, where the Hwiccas at once took 
possession and extended their settlements over Gloucestershire and 
Worcestershire. 

While the West Saxons were thus drawing together under the 
inspiration of Ceawlin's leadership and preparing for the great 
The North- ^"°^® whicli they were to play in the future history of 
Confedera- ^^® island, the Angles north of the Humber, possibly 
tion. under the pressure of the Scots upon their western bor- 

der, were also learning to combine their strength for offensive and 
defensive war. These Scots were representatives of the old Irish 
Goidels, who some time in the fifth or sixth century had begun 
to cross in greater numbers to the opposite coa.sts of Argyle and 

Strathclyde, and had swarmed over the western High- 
strathciiidis ^'^^^^s, subduing the old Picts, probably merging with 

them and forming the basis of the later Highland popu- 
lation. They were no match, however, for the warlike lords of 
the lowlands. A generation after Ceawlin had united the West 
Saxon tribes of southern Britain, the Scot king Aidan led an army 
of Scots and Picts and Britons down into the lands of the Berni- 
cians. The recently confederated Bernicians and Deirans advanced 
to meet them under their king, Ethelfrid. The battle was joined 

at Dawstone near Carlisle. The Scots and their allies 
Daivstone, y^rere routed, and so great was the slaughter that for 

more than a century the memory of the terrible ven- 
geance of Ethelfrid "The Devastator" was enough to deter the 
Scots from any further attempts upon the lands of the Bernicians. 
Ten years later Ethelfrid won a second victory over the western 
Britons under the walls of Chester. The city was taken and sacked, 



24 THE TEUTONIC SETTLEMENT OE BRITAIN 

and for three centuries lay in mournful ruins. The victory of 
Chester gave the Northumbrian Angles possession of all the lands 
between Leeds and the Irish Sea. 

With these later victories of Ceawlin and Ethelfrid the era of 
the Teutonic conquest and settlement of Britain ends. The 

fertile lands of the old Roman provinces were now 
End of era of securely in the possession of the invaders, abundant for 
and conquest, all needs for many years to come. West Wales or 

Cornwall, North Wales or Wales proper, and Strath- 
clyde, separated from all land communication with each other, 
alone remained in the hands of the Celts. The Teutons had 
already begun to call them Welsh, or Strangers,^ and under this 
name the remnant of the once great people pass into modern his- 
tory. The memory of their last brave stand in defense of the 
inheritance of their fathers, when for once, but too late, they 
dropped their quarrels and united for the common defense, long 
lingered in the name of Kymry or Allies. 

Thus, by the close of the sixth century, the Teutons had estab- 
lished themselves in Britain. It had taken them, however, two 

hundred years to accomplish what Roman legionaries 
Themethod ]^j^q| accomplished in four years. This was due not to 

Teutonic the stubborn resistance of the Britons, for the Britons 

advance. ' 

had long since ceased to be capable of resistance, but 
wholly to the method of the Teutonic advance. The Germans had 
settled in Britain as they had settled on the Rhine when Caesar 
knew them, not under any common king, or in one compact horde, 
but in detached tribes or kindreds; each kindred or maegth,^ mov- 
ing out for itself, as it needed more room, driving the skeleton 
British population on before it, taking what lands its present need 
demanded, and here settling as a kind of frontier colony and giv- 
ing its name to the surrounding region. Each colony was thus an 
independent state, — civitas, as Caesar or Tacitus would call it; liv- 
ing under its own local laws and under the government of its own 
elective chieftains, or ealdormen, but ready to unite in loose con- 

^ See Freeman in Encyclopedia Britannica, VIII, p. 269, for use of this 
word both in Britain and on the continent. 
2 Bede uses the word of the Mercian tribes. 



METHOD OF THE SETTLEMENT 25 

federation with neighboring and similar communities, whenever 
threatened by common danger. They then selected some chief- 
tain, renowned in war or in council, who led the allied hosts to 
battle, and for the time exercised a regal authority. The West 
Saxon Ceawlin was such a war chief, certainly not the first, but 
probably the first to unite all the Saxon tribes west of the Chilterns 
under one leadership. It is significant, however, that such con- 
federations as those associated with the name of Ceawlin or Ethel- 
frid belong to the later period of the conquest, and mark its final 
stages. The great part of the territory was first abandoned by 
the Britons and then seized by the Teutons, not as conquerors, 
but as simple settlers ; not as a whole, but a fragment at a time as 
the needs of a new generation dictated. 

A similar instance may be found in the series of movements by 
which the lands along the upper Rhine and the Danube were finally 
detached from the empire and became German territory. Here, 
in the rich valleys which now belong to the modern Baden and 
Wurtemberg, the old Alamannia, were once flourishing settlements 
of Roman colonists introduced from beyond the Rhine. During 
the third century there was frequent and severe fighting on this 
frontier. But long before the Germans had made a permanent 
lodgment the older population had begun to recede. For a long 
period there is no record of battles, or traditions of cities stormed 
or sacked; and yet the recession of the older populations steadily 
continued, and the Teutonic population as steadily filled in behind 
them, swarming about the dwindling cities and effectually taking 
possession of the land clear to the Rhine and the Swiss Lakes; and 
yet so gradually withal, that no historian can tell just when this 
region ceased to be Roman, or began to be wholly German. The 
Marcomannic conquest of what is modern Bavaria is still more to 
the point. Here, as in the case of the Angles in north and mid 
Britain, the invaders, in overwhelming masses, poured into a coun- 
try already depopulated by centuries of anarchy, war, famine, and 
pestilence. The remnant population did not try to resist, but 
retired into the remote Aljjine valleys, or shut themselves up in 
their few remaining cities, where, in time, by a steady process of 
infiltration, the survivors of the old population disappeared in the 



26 THE TEUTONIC SETTLEMENT OF BEITAIN" 

new, assimilating to them, in language, institutions, and physical 
appearance. 

So, apparently, Britain also was won, not by a storm, followed 
by a deluge, as when the Goth swept into Italy, or the Vandal 
swept over Gaul and Spain; but rather, after the first fiery 
eruption into the Thames basin, described by Gildas, by a steady 
recession of the Celtic population, attended by a corresponding 
advance of the Germans. The new-comers were no such fiends 
incarnate as commonly represented, fired only by a wild frenzy for 
the shedding of blood, or bent only upon exterminating the original 
inhabitants ; they were rather a race of herdsmen and farmers, and 
as long as they were not attacked themselves, or were driven by no 
pressure of expanding numbers to seek new lands, were for bar- 
barians, in the main, peaceably inclined. Hence long periods appar- 
ently passed, in which the new-comers remained quietly and 
peacefully within the last established borders. The meager Celtic 
population beyond these borders, without protection and not liking 
the rough ways of their neighbors, quietly and steadily withdrew, 
leaving an ever-widening belt of wilderness between them and 
the dreaded strangers. When a particular Teutonic settlement 
had outgrown its territories, a new swarm again moved out into 
the regions beyond, sometimes driving out the depleted Britons 
altogether, sometimes allowing them to remain in a servile relation, 
but more likely finding only a deserted wilderness. Then the same 
process went on again, the Britons steadily withdrawing as the 
Teutons advanced. 

Where there were cities the stages of the process, perhaps, were 
somewhat different, but the results were virtually the same. Some- 
times the inhabitants stood at bay behind their walls, or within the 
lines of an old Eoman camp, and maintained themselves in the 
midst of surrounding Teutonic tribes. Sometimes, possibly in 
an attempt to dislodge the new settlers from the neighborhood, 
they drew down the wrath of the invaders, and in a short, quick 
action lost everything; the pitiless swords of the enemy exter- 
minating the inhabitants and leaving only a desolate heath to mark 
the spot where once had stood a British town. This could not 
have been the general experience, however, as the survival of so 



EARLY ENGLISH INSTITUTIONS 27 

many Roman town names at the end of this era indicates. It is 
more likely that as each city was cut otf from all support from the 
neighboring country, its Celtic population dwindled, or, if recruited 
at all, was recruited from Teutonic elements which rapidly absorbed 
the remnant Celtic stock. It is to be remembered, however, that 
the Germans did not love the city, and much preferred the open 
country; hence it is more likely that if a city survived, it was only 
to be submitted to this process of dwindling, until little was left 
save the name and a pitiful cluster of habitations suitable for the 
needs of its present mongrel population, and sufficient to mark the 
ancient site and preserve the ancient name. 

In the north the advance was more rapid than in the south, but 
there is no record of any great battles. More significant still, 

during the whole early period, there is no trace of the 
advmce formation of any great confederations of Teutonic 
^^^ tribes, such as we might expect, had the Britons ever 

been able to exert any military strength. Instead, we 
have on the part of the Germans the same advance in detached 
bands, each band taking up its station as an independent colony, 
where wood or watercourse or valley attracted them, as in the days 
of Tacitus. The advance was more rapid, because the Angles came 
in far greater numbers than the Saxons, and larger areas of land 
were needed at once. But there is no record of any concerted 
action on the part either of Celt or Teuton, until we reach the time 
of Ceawlin and Ethelfrid. 

Of the ancient laws and institutions of the Teutonic tribes who 
entered Britain, directly, we know no more than we do of the 

events of the so-called conquest. Nothing, however, has 
Engtish yet been advanced to show that they difilered materially 

from the institutions of the Teutonic tribes who were 
known to Caesar and Tacitus. Monogamy was the rule: woman- 
hood was honored ; children were loved and cherished. , Each tribe 
or kindred was a small state by itself, sufficient to all the needs of 
local government. The male members of the community, the free 
warriors, were both citizens and soldiers. They met under arms 
in an assembly, or folkmote, to discuss matters of general impor- 
tance. In this capacity they were also a court to try serious 



28 THE TEUTONIC SETTLEMENT OF BRITAIN 

offenses against the customary laws of the tribe. Here, too, the 
young warrior was formally initiated by appropriate ceremonies 
into the company of free citizens. In this assembly also they 
elected the eaidormen, the princijjes of Tacitus,^ whose duty it 
was to make regular circuits through the settlements, appre- 
hending criminals and holding courts of justice. In this service 
they were attended by a body of select companions, the comifatus, 
who assisted in capturing and trying criminals and enforcing the 
laws. These companions, the gesiths, were bound by special oath 
to support their chief in the performance of his duties. They 
lived at his table, and for this the other members of the tribe 
brought their regular gifts ; thus recognizing the public nature of 
the service of the ealdorman and his companions and the common 
obligation of supporting them. In time of war the ealdorman 
with his following of gesiths formed the nucleus of the host. The 
several magistrates together formed a tribal council, the germ 
of the later national tu it eyia gemot. It was their custom to come 
together while the free warriors were gathering for the folkmote, 
as a sort of preliminary council to prepare the business which was 
to be submitted to the people. Of kings in the later sense, the 
early Germans of Britain had none, though the germ out of which 
the king subsequently developed is to be found in the common 
chieftain elected by several tribes on the eve of a general war. 
His powers, however, were only temporary, and when the war was 
ended his authority ceased, and the confederating tribes again fell 
apart, each pursuing its independent life as before. 

Of the freemen there were two classes, eorls and ceorls. The 
eorl was a noble, but his nobility seems to have entitled him only 
to a precedence in rank. His life also was protected by 
of the a higher luergeld, the fine or indemnity which the mur- 

derer or his family, paid to the family of his victim. 
The ceorl was the simple freeman, whose political liberty was 
attested by his right of meeting with his fellows for public business 
with arms in his hands. Chattel slavery as it existed among the 
Eomans was never popular among the Germans. Servitude, how- 

* Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, I, p. 125. 



CLASSES OF THE POPULATIOiq' 29 

ever, was by no means uncommon, but it took a form of serfage, 
wherein a tenant and his heirs were bound to perform certain 
services for a master who was at the same time owner of the soil. 
Tacitus compares the position of the German slave to that of the 
Eomau colonns, who in Tacitus' day was really a free tenant whose 
home was protected by law, and whose right of marriage was recog- 
nized. We have no way of knowing what the relative proportion 
of the unfree was to the free until the time of the Domesday 
Survey; but then the organization of English society had become 
very complex compared with that of the primitive Teutonic tribes, 
and the servile condition itself had been differentiated into a 
series of degrees, or gradations, the distinctions of which are 
obscure. It is not unlikely that the numbers of the servile popula- 
tion were largely recruited from the ranks of the conquered 
Britons. Servitude was also frequently prescribed by the courts as 
a penalty for crime. It may be that in the more thickly populated 
parts of Britain, the south and west, where Teutonic occupation 
was more after the nature of a conquest, that the new population 
was superimposed upon an older servile population. It may be also 
that the members of this servile population were of German blood, 
and represented the results of earlier Eoman conquests beyond the 
Khine and the upper Danube, when whole nations were corralled 
and deported to distant parts of the empire and settled as coloni 
or tenant farmers. Thousands of these unwilling settlers had 
been introduced into Britain. 

The civitas or tribal state was subdivided into judicial districts, 

which seem at first to have had various names in different parts of 

Teutonic Britain. For simplicity we may call this sub- 

Tlie Hundved. j. ./ .j 

' division the himdred, although the name, though known 

on the continent, does not appear in the laws of England until the 

time of Edgar. Undoubted traces of the institution 

959-975. 

however, are to be found as early as the time of Tacitus, 
and it may be taken as one of the most characteristic features of 
the early Teutonic state. Here at regular intervals, every four 
weeks, as fixed by the laws of Edgar, the freemen of the district 
came together in the hundredgemot, constituting a court, in which 
civil suits were tried, or quarrels between neighbors were adjusted. 



30 THE TEUTONIC SETTLEMENT OF BEITAIN 

Below the lunidred was the town or tun. The town consisted 
of a cluster of detached dwellings, each with its court or door- 
yard, stables, and outhouses. The adjacent lands also 
The Tun. ^ ' ' <> 

belonged to the town. Here the freeman possessed a 
shifting severalty in the arable land, and a share in the common 
use of meadow and woodland. The town also had its popular 
assembly or tungemot. The tungemot does not seem to have been 
a civil court like the hundredgemot; its functions were economic 
rather than judicial. 

When the period of the Anglo-Saxon codes began, private owner- 
ship of land was already recognized ; yet, if the progress of Germanic 

institutions on the continent be considered, we may 
Omiersiiip believe that in Britain also the lands of each settlement 

of Land. 

were at first held by the freemen in common; but with 

the increase of population the exclusive right of individuals to par- 
ticular pieces of land was allowed. The first form of tenure how- 
ever was probably /(9/^'-^a?i(^ or land held bjfolh-right, distinguished 
later from book-land or land set apart by special charter or grant. 
The charter, however, suggests the influence of the priest, nor is it 
unlikely that the church is largely responsible, if not for the intro- 
duction, at least for the rapid extension of privileged ownership 
in land among the Teutons of Britain. If so, this is only one of 
the many ways, economic, social, and political in which Christianity 
affected profoundly the life of the new-comers. 

Before the priest came, they were a simple people, knowing 
little of the arts of civilized life, but much of forest craft ; living 

under their curious old laws of custom, yet far re- 
Cv^lmif moved from the condition of the mere savage. They 

had their traditions and war songs; but knew noth- 
ing of letters. They had also their conceptions of deity, but 
worshiped God as they saw him revealed in the wild tumult of 
the storm, or the wilder tumult of their own rude natures. They 
knew nothing of temples, but reared their altars in the silence of 
the sacred grove, or upon some lonely hill top. Here they sought 
to solve the mysteries of their own lives, in offerings, sometimes of 
human victims, more often of the animals supposed to be the 
favorites of their special deities. These deities were the great 



CHARACTER OP THE PEOPLE 31 

gods Tin, Wotan or Odin, and Donar or Thor. There were also a 
multitude of lesser deities. The practical religion of the people 
was made up largely of beliefs in omens of good luck or ill luck ; 
in elves and fairies; "cui'sing stones" and "wishing wells"; nor is 
it likely that "the common villagers ever rose to any sublimated 
theories of deity ; or were ever conscious of more than a confused 
unthinking worship of things held to be holy, whether beings or 
places." There were deities for river and grove and fountain, for 
the upper air and the world of the dead, for the forest and the 
grain field, for the field of battle and the wedding festival, for the 
home and the hearth, for the flock and the sheepfold, in short, 
for everything that touched the lives of the people, or for anything 
they could not understand, they had their deity. 

They loved war and the chase, and constantly manifested their 
contempt for a life which was hard and rigorous at best. They 
liTed upon milk and cheese, the flesh of their herds, and the 
quarry, and the products of a limited agriculture. They could not 
have been very cleanly in their habits. The word itch, as also the 
common names of most of the well-known dirt diseases, are old 
English names. But so are the words clean, loJiolesome, healthy, 
hale, and hearty. Possibly the former were winter words, asso- 
ciated with the dreary months when the people were compelled to 
hive themselves with their cattle in close dens or caverns for pro- 
tection from the weather ; while the latter were summer words, 
associated with joyous days when open fields and fresh winds, 
springing flowers and flowing streams invited the people to a dif- 
ferent life. All in all they were very human, these first Teutonic 
settlers. of Britain, and not very different from what the people who 
dwell upon their lands to-day would be under similar circumstances. 



CHAPTEE III 

THE RIVAL CONFEDERACIES OF TEUTONIC BRITAIN, AND THE 

FOUNDING OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH 

The next stage in the history of Teutonic Britain is one of great 
importance; in it English nationahty assumes its first forms. 

The time is still far distant when we may use with any 
new era accuracy the words, "England" or '"English." The 
founding of newcomers are still Germans ; just such Germans as were 

dwelling on the Weser and the Ems, living under the 
same laws and under the same tribal organization. There is also 
the same bewildering succession of names without forms, of forms 
without outline, of progress without unity, such as marks the 
history of contemporary Teutonic life on the continent ; and yet 
within this confusion, obscured by the shifting shadows, the 
Teutons of Britain were molding to new habits of thought and 
action, entirely alien to the old isolated tribal life, and preparing 
for the advent of the nation. 

By the close of the sixth century all the most fertile parts of 
the island had been seized; but the crowding of population upon 

population continued, and soon embroiled the new pos- 
of the sessors of the soil in an endless series of intertribal 

wars, waged for the possession of what they had taken 
from the Britons. Leagues and counter -leagues rapidly succeeded 
one another. The old tribal lines gradually dissolved, and the elected 
war chief of temporary powers passed into the permanent king; 
the isolated tribal settlements into the seven or eight confederacies, 
the "kingdoms," of the so-called "Heptarchy." Then followed 
a bitter rivalry of these "Heptarchy" kings, a fierce strife for 
supremacy, which ended at last in the final triumph of the kings 
of the West Saxons and the establishment of the permanent 
hegemony of Wessex. 

33 



591-616] ETHELBERT IN KENT 33 

Such in outline is the history of the new era. Its events may be 

grouped about two movements : fii'st^ the growth of a habit on the 
part of neighboring tribes, of acting together in great 

ofmefra Confederacies, culminating at last in the permanent union 
of all the tribes in a national state ; and, second, the 

introduction of Christianity, and the final organization of the 

national church. 

When the period of settlement closed, as we have seen, Ceawlin 

was already at the head of a widely extended kingdom or con- 
federation of the West Saxon tribes. His kingdom, if 

The . 

breaUngup kingdom it can be called, included all the tribes from 
Kingdom, the Severn to the downs of Surrey, and from the basin 

591. , 

of the middle Thames to the sea. It is not likely that 
his power rested upon other foundation than the shadowy authority 
conferred by confederated tribes upon the elective war chief. 
Such loose confederations were very common among the Grermans 
of the continent down to the close of the migrations. The counter- 
parts of Ceawlin's career may be found in the Cheruscan and Mar- 
coman kings of Tacitus, Possibly also, as in the case of the German 
national hero, Arminius, it was the attempt of Ceawlin to transfer 
the temporary authority of the war chief into the permanent and 
more substantial power of a true king that led directly to his fall and 
the dissolution of this early confederation of the West Saxon tribes. 
This event took place in 591, two years before Ceawlin's death. 

East of the confederation, which by habit we call the kingdom 
of the West Saxons, lay the Jutish tribes, who had settled on the 

south bank of the lower Thames. We have already seen 
560^616^^ The them under the leadership of their young king Ethel- 
oHJiT'^^ bert, struggling with Ceawlin on the borders of the 
ew! ^"^^"" Forest of Anderida, for the possession of the downs of 

Surrey. It is not unlikely that Ethelbert also took part 
in the overthrow of the West Saxon king, though the first shock to 
Ceawlin's power seems to have come from the Hwiccas, whom he 
himself had recently settled on the Severn, At all events, after 
the fall of Ceawlin, Ethelbert succeeded to his prestige in south 
Britain, and built up a similar confederation of the eastern tribes. 
According to Bede, his dominions reached to the Humber ; that is, 



34 THE CONFEDERACIES OF TEUTONIC BRITAIN" 

all the East Saxon, East Anglian, Middle Anglian, South Anglian, 
and a part of the West Saxon tribes entered the new confederation, 
and either voluntarily, or by compulsion, recognized the overlord- 
ship of Ethelbert. This second confederation lasted until the 
death of Ethelbert, when it in turn also dissolved, and the tribes 
east of the Chilterns regrouped themselves under the leadership 
of Eaedwald, king of the East Angles. 

The great name of Ethelbert had extended to the continent, 
and enabled him to make an alliance with the family of Erankish 

kings who ruled over the conquests of Clovis. The 
of Chris- Germans of Britain were still pagans, but the Franks 

had long since adopted Christianity. The men of the 
Erankish royal house as a class, however, had been little influenced 
by the teachings of Christianity; they were for the most part 
graceless ruffians. But many of the women furnished examples of 
sweet and noble piety, honored a difficult station by blameless lives, 
and passed to their graves, leaving behind them a precious memory 
of good deeds and helpful influence. Some of these royal prin- 
cesses went out from their own homes to serve Christ in the halls 
of heathen lords, where they became most efficient missionaries 
of the church. Thus it happened that Bertha, the granddaughter 
of Clotaire the Great, left her father's court at Paris and entered 
the home of Ethelbert of Kent. By special arrangement she was 
allowed to bring her chaplain, Luithard, with her. The long- 
deserted British church of St. Martin at Canterbury was refitted 
for his use, and the old walls looked down once more upon tlie 
stately service of the Christian church. Here the good chaj^lain 
chanted and preached; here the pious queen with burdened heart 
bowed and prayed, waiting for the redemption of her heathen lord 
and her adopted people. How much she and her friends had to 
do with rousing the church of the continent to any direct mission- 
ary eJJort we do not know. But it is more than likely, if the truth 
were knov/n, that the coming of the first missionaries was due to 
her efforts and her influence quite as much as to Pope Gregory's 
happy knack of making Latin puns.^ Certain it is that the band 

^See Green, History of the English People, I, p. 37, for the well- 
known story. 



597-601] li^TTRODUCTION OF CHEI8TIANITT 35 

of monks led by Augustine whom Gregory sent out, came under the 
special patronage and protection of the neighboring Frankish kings, 
and that when they at last landed at Thanet in the spring of 597, 
they found Ethelbert prepared for their coming and ready to listen to 
their teaching. On June 2, Whitsunday, Ethelbert himself abjured 
the faith of his fathers in Wotanand Donar, and received Christian 
baptism. Thousands of his subjects followed his example, and 
within a year the mission had become a flourishing church. In 
June, 601, Gregory sent to Augustine the archiepiscopal pallium 
or pall,^ with a complete plan for the organization of the island 
church. As yet, however, Christianity had not advanced beyond 
the boundaries of the original Kent. Neither East Saxons, South 
Saxons, nor West Saxons were ready to receive Christian teachei's. 
But the sanguine Gregory had his four square plan of organization 
ready. The entire island was to be divided into two nearly equal 
metropolitan sees, each with its twelve bishops ; the primate of 
the northern province was to be established in York; of the 
southern province in London. Augustine wisely selected Canter- 
bury, under the immediate protection of Ethelbert, as a far more 
eligible site for his archiepiscopal seat, and left to the future the 
founding of the northern primacy, and. the establishment of the 
twenty-four bishoprics. 

Augustine was not content with simply baptizing his new con- 
verts. He brought with him a knowledge of the ways of the great 
civilized world, and he and his monks taught their royal con- 
verts many useful lessons. It was due to his influence, probably, 
that about the year 600 the old customary laws of the 

The laws of ^ '' ^ ^ . . ^ -^ . 

Ethelbert, Oantwara were reduced to writing and put into code 
form; "the first formal record of the laws of an English 
people," preceding by ninety years the like record which Ine 
made of the laws of the West Saxons. Thus we owe to Ethelbert 
almost all our knowledge of the Anglo-Saxon institutions as they 
existed at the close of the era of settlement. As represented in his 
laws, they remind us of the descriptions which Tacitus gave of the 
Germans who lived on the borders of the empire in the first century 

^ The distinctive badge of tlie archbishop, a sort of scarf or stole worn 
round the neck, with falling ends in front, marked each with three crosses. 



36 THE CONFEDERACIES OF TEUTONIC BRITAIN 

of the Christian era, and show that the Teutons of Britain had not 
yet advanced very far beyond the condition of the Germans who 
were first known to the Romans. The only penalties known to 
Ethelbert's laws were fines, or indemnities, covering almost every 
conceivable injury to life or limb or property, and varying from the 
ordinary indemnities j^rescribed for the wrongs of a freeman, to the 
ninefold penalty prescribed for injury to the king or his property ; 
the elevenfold penalty prescribed for injury to a bishop, and the 
twelvefold penalty prescribed in the case of him who destroyed the 
"goods of God." Here we may plainly read the influence of the 
priest, and see the high estate which the church had already won. 

The overlordship of Ethelbert, like that of Ceawlin, passed 
away with the generation to which he belonged, and the con- 
federacy of Jutes, Saxons, and Angles dissolved once 
reactionin more into "a chaos of warring tribes." A reaction also 
set in against the church. Edbald, the new king of the 
Cantwara, not only rejected his father's faith, but compelled the 
Christian teachers to retire into Gaul. 

When Ceawlin was closing his long career in the southwest, 

Ethelric, the king of the Bernicians, was extending his power over 

the neighboring Deirans. In 693 his son Ethelfrid, 

Tire frst 

Nor'mimhri- "the Devastator," succeeded to the headship of the 

united Northumbrian tribes. We have already seen 

him at Dawston overwhelming a combined host of Scots, Picts, 

and Britons; and again, a few years later, overwhelming the 

Britons in a decisive engagement far down under the walls of 

Chester. For twenty years this terrible king lorded it over the 

north and extended his power far to the south. His efforts to 

extend his power here, however, brought him face to face with the 

new East Anglian confederation of Eaedwald. The two 

armies met at Retford in Nottinghamshire; Ethelfrid 

was slain, and Raedwald for the time secured his supremacy 

south of the Humber. 

The Northumbrian confederacy of Ethelfrid, which had now 
outlasted two kings, did not break up at his death, but passed to 
the exiled king of the Deirans, Edwin. Ethelfrid had pursued 
him relentlessly from one exile to another, and it was the refusal of 



TEUTONIC 

BRITAIN 

About 600 




617-627] CONVERSION" OP JSTORTHUMBRIA 37 

Eaedwald to betray his unfortunate guest which led to the war so 

fatal to Ethelfrid. Edwin now returned to his people, and soon 

extended his authority even beyond that of his old 

successor of enemy, Ethelfrid. He awed the Celtic princes on his 

Ethelfrid. ^ -, -, ■,-. ^ -^^ 

western borders, and compelled Man and Anglesey 
to recognize his overlordship. The Anglian kings to the south, 
breaking away from the East Anglian confederacy, also accepted his 
supremacy. He also pushed his conquests to the north, and here, 
on a hill overlooking the Forth, built a frontier fortress, to 
which he left his name, the beginning of the modern Edinburgh. 
Then the great king looked about him for a consort worthy to 
share his honors. He found her in Ethelburga, the daughter of 
Ethelbert; and again a Christian princess turned her 

Conversion ^ 

of Northum- back upon her own people and entered the court of a 

Jjvici ± -i. 

pagan king. The same stipulations were made as in 
the case of her mother, Bertha; and again a devout princess 
prayed and waited in her land of exile, and her pious chap- 
lain preached and taught. Edwin, however, was not to be as easily 
won as Ethelbert. He long withstood the earnest entreaties 
of his wife, and the fervid arguments of her chaplain, Paulinus. 
At last, under the skillful representations of the queen and the 
chaplain, the birth of a daughter, a narrow escape from the 
dagger of an assassin, and a successful raid upon the West 
Saxons, presented themselves with such combined force to the 
mind of the king as evidences of the favor and power of the Chris- 
tian's God, that he consented to refer the matter to his witan, as 
the counselors of the king were called. They met in solemn 
assembly, the witenagemot, and listened while Paulinus presented 
his case. The "tall, stooping form, slender aquiline nose and 
black hair falling round a thin, worn face, were long remembered 
in the north." The hearts of the grim old warriors softened as 
the faithful priest, like Paul of old, talked to them of "righteous- 
ness and judgment," of Christ's love and eternal life. Then an 
aged ealdorman arose, and in words of rare beauty, gave voice to 
the new hope which the words of the preacher had kindled: "The 
life of man, king," he cried, "is as a sparrow's flight through 
the hall, when a man is sitting at meat in wintertide with the 



38 THE CONFEDEKACIES OF TEUTOXIC BRITAIN" 

warm fire lighted on the hearth, but the chill rainstorm without. 
The sparrow flies in at one door and tarries for a moment in the 
light and heat of the hearth fire, and then flying forth from the 
other, vanishes in wintry darkness whence it came. So tarries for 
a moment the life of man in our sight. For what is before it and 
what after it we know not. If this new teaching tell us aught 
certainly of these, let us follow it."^ Still thewitan hesitated, 
until Coifi, the king's priest, denounced the gods whom he had 
served and asked that he himself might set fire to the pagan 
temple at Godmundham. Then Edwin hesitated no longer, and 
on Easter Day, April 12, G27, acknowledged his submission to 
the new faith in the rite of Christian baptism. 

With the accession of the powerful Edwin, the conversion 
of the north advanced rapidly. York was made an archi- 

episcopal see, and Paulinus was established as its first 
primdcij archbishop. Whenever the king went through his king- 

dom upon a royal progress, his bishop attended him, 
and each court day was made the occasion for preaching and 
baptizing. Vassal kings also followed the example of Edwin. In 
628 (?) the son of his old friend Eaedwald of East Anglia sub- 
mitted to baptism, and three years later Felix, a Bnrgundian 
bishop, established himself among the East Angles. Paulinus also 
preached among the Lindiswara, and built a stone church at Lin- 
coln, where, in G28, he consecrated Honorius, the new archbishop 
of Canterbury. A few years later the Pope formally recognized 
the northern primacy by sending to Paulinus the coveted pallium. 
As with Ethelbert in the south, the presence of the priest by 
the side of the barbaric king told powerfully for civilization; for 

Edwin, also under priestly tutelage, honestly strove to 

Influence of gj^g ti^g people the precious boon of peace under good 

TO Nortimm- j^ws and wisc administration. It was said first of him 
bria. 

that in his days, "a woman with her babe might walk 

scatheless from sea to sea." The people tilled their fields and 

gathered their harvests in quiet and safety. Men no longer feared 

the thief or the robber ; stakes were driven by the roadside spring. 



1 Bede, Ecclesiastical History, II, 13. Quoted in Green, H. E. P., I, p. 46. 



626] PEJSTDA IN MERCIA 39 

where the traveler found a brass cup hanging for his use, and no 
thief durst carry it off. From the priest, too, Edwin learned to 
adopt a certain pomp, nntil then unknown to the simple barbaric 
war chief. When he passed through the villages on his royal tours, 
a standard of purple and gold preceded him; a tu£t of feathers, also, 
the Eoman tufa, surmounted his spear, and was carried before him as 
he walked, the symbol of the royal presence ; — forerunners of crowns 
and thrones yet to come. 

Thus the church, as the great civilizer, had already begun its 

work in Teutonic Britain. But the conquest of the island was 

not to be completed without a long and bitter struefgle. 

ReMoions 

reaction in The proverbial hatred of the barbarian for foreign insti- 

tlie North. , ,. , ^ ^ ^^ ^ 

tutions was soon awakened. In Kent, the death of 
Ethelbert had been the signal for reaction. In the north, the 
reaction did not wait for the death of Edwin, but was the cause of 
his overthrow. 

The rise of ^^^ Anglian tribes of ^mid-Britain were very early known 
Mercia. j^g Mercians, or the border people. In the later sixth 
century, they had begun to draw together into a confederacy sim- 
ilar to those about them. But it was not until the time of their 

great king Penda that this fifth league became a 

Penda,626. ^ • i i i , i , , ., . ■, , x^ 

lormidable threat to its neighbors. Penda, moreover, 
was not a common conqueror, like Ceawlin, fighting only for 
dominion. He represents the protest of the adherents of the old 
faith against the innovations which the foreigner had introduced. 
About him gathered all the dissatisfied elements of mid-Britain, 
to make a last stand for the faith of their fathers. Penda was 
also a politician, as well as a pagan reactionary, and did not hesitate 
to ally himself with Cadwallon, the Christian king of North Wales. 
The Celtic Christians had always held aloof from their pagan 
neighbors, a fact which Gildas had deplored even in his day. 

They had not only refused to take any steps to convert 
ofmtc'^mc *^®"^ ^0 Christianity, but, even after the Teutons had 
ciiurxheT^^^^ received Christian teachers from the continent, they 

stoutly refused to recognize the new church. Augus- 
tine, by the help of Ethelbert, had arranged a conference with the 
Welsh bishops on the banks of the Severn, in the hope of enlisting 



40 THE CONFEDEKACIES OF TEUTONIC BRITAIN 

them in his work of converting their neighbors. The Welsh 
listened willingly at first, but, when they learned that cooperation 
meant the recognition of the supremacy of the new arch- 
^l^c^' (^l. , bishop, and the acceptance of the innovations which two 
oak, '•Aust." hundred years had added to the western church, they 
stubbornly refused to accept the terms of compact, and allowed the 
council to break up with hard and bitter words. "If ye will not 
have peace with us as brethren," cried the angry primate, "ye 
shall have war with us as enemies ; if ye will not preach the way of 
life to the Angles, you shall at their hands suffer the vengeance of 
death." 

Nothing had been done in the generation since to cement this 

breach. The hand of the terrible Ethelfrid had fallen heavily 

upon the Welsh. Their "holy men," to the number of 

Continued ^^q thousand, had been slain before Chester, an event 

IwsMitij of ' ' 

Welsh and which they could not fail to connect with the bitter 

prophecy of Augustine. The Christian Edwin had fol- 
lowed the pagan Ethelfrid, and gleaned where he had reaped ; nor 
did it make his dominance more acceptable, that, unlike Ethel- 
frid, he was a Christian prince. In the wild ferocity of their 
neighbors, the Welsh could hardly distinguish Christian from 
pagan. 

The western Celts, therefore, although Christians, were ready 
to unite with Penda for a joint attack on Edwin, and an expul- 
sion of Paulinus and his monks from Northumbria. 
Alliance 

of Penda The allied armies met Edwin at Hatfield, near the north 

and ' 

Batthof^' ^^^gl^a^ border. Edwin was killed, his army routed, 
Hatfield. qj^^ ^jg confederacy broken up. Archbishop Paulinus, 
with Ethelburga and her children, fled to Kent, where the con- 
version of Edbald had recently put an end to the pagan reaction, 
and once more established Christianity among the Cantwara. 

Penda now succeeded to the supremacy of Edwin in mid- 
Britain; and, for the first time, all the Anglian tribes west of the 

„ f Fen country were united in one confederation. The 

Recovery of •' 

iVort;mj?ibrw. regions north of the Humber, however, he left to his 
ally, Cadwallon, who lorded it here for twelve months with great 
cruelty. The glorious Ethelfrid had left a son, Oswald, who, dur- 



634-642] OSWALD AND PENDA 41 

ing the triumph of Edwin, had remained in exile in lona, a Celtic 
mission station, on a barren rock off the west coast of Scotland. 
From his lonely exile, he heard the cry of his people under the 
cruel hand of Cadwallon, and, with a small but determined band, 
T) ■ ij . descended the north Tyne ; overthrew and slew Cadwal- 
^^^- Ion on Denisburn, not far from the Eoman wall, and 

made himself supreme in all Northumbria. He then set to work 
to restore the broken altars of the Christian faith. He refused to 
recall Paulinus, however, for he had been identified with the rival 
dynasty of Edwin, and the Bernicians had already refused to heed 
his teachings. Oswald, therefore, sent to his old friends at lona 
for help. The monk Aidan responded ; a man who combined tact 
with purity of life and real nobility of character, and by "teaching 
not otherwise than he and his followers lived," he soon won the 
confidence of the Bernicians. Christianity rapidly regained its 
hold in the north. At Lindisfarne, or Holy Island, Aidan estab- 
lished the inevitable monastery, and, from this as a center, he 
sent out his missionaries to teach the people. Aidan represented 
the older form of worship; yet Oswald felt none of the hostility of 
Cadwallon to the southern form of Christianity. He supported 
the Lombard Birinus, who had begun a work among the West 
Saxons, and was present and acted as godfather when the king 
Cynegils was baptized. 

The relations between Oswald and Penda remained peaceful 
for many years. Apparently, Penda was forced for the time to 
Oswald and ^^^V '^^^^ ^^^^ vassal relation; for, according to Bede, 
Penda. Oswald brought under his dominion all the nations and 

provinces of Britain. So wide-reaching was his infiuence, that, 
even in distant Kent, the children of Edwin, the rival line of 
Deira, were thought to, be no longer safe, and were sent by their 
mother across the Channel to her Frankish kindred for safe keep- 
ing. Penda, however, was not the kind of spirit to bear long even 
the loosest chains, and, in the year 642, we find him in battle 
Triumph of ^^^^^ ^^^ ovcr-king on the bloody Maserfield, somewhere 
Mercia. j,^ Shropshire. Oswald was defeated, and later put to 

death, and Penda was left to reign as the one great king among 
the Teutonic tribes. 



43 THE CONFEDERACIES OF TEUTONIC BRITAIN 

The Northumbrian tribes did not lose their independence alto- 
gether upon the the fall of Oswald. They remained, however, 
Second broken and divided, until they were again united under 

recovery of . Oswald's brother, Oswy. But, for thirteen years, Penda 
Northumbrta, ' j ' j 5 

^54' and his Mercians carried on a cruel war against the 

northern kingdoms. Oswy pleaded hard for peace, but all his 
efforts at reconciliation were treated with scorn by Penda. At 
last, in 654, a decisive battle was fought on the Winwaed, not far 
from the modern Leeds, and Penda, now eighty years old, per- 
ished in the fight. The victory of Oswy, who fought against 
vastly superior numbers, was probably due to the discontent of 
Penda's vassal kings, who were weary of the lordly ways of the 
old pagan, and dissatisfied with his long wars against their Chris- 
tian brethren of the north. 

With the fall of Penda, the last bulwark of paganism was swept 
away. Even while he lived, his son Wulfhere had submitted to 

baptism, and his Mercians had begun to follow Chris- 
cnriMimdiy ^iau teachers under his very eyes. When, therefore, 
inMercia. three years after Penda's death, Wulfhere succeeded 
to the royal title in Mercia, and the last of the great confed- 
eracies had thus accepted a Christian king, the strength of 
paganism was broken. It survived only among the South Saxons. 
Sixty years had now passed since the baptism of Ethelbert, and, 
although Teutonic Britain was virtually won for Christianity, there 

was, as yet, no uniform rule of faith, or harmony of 
churches in practice; there was no commonly accepted authority 
the 7th before which rival bishops might bring their quarrels 

for adjustment, or the unworthy might be tried and 
punished. North of the Humber, Oswald had restored the older 
form which ho had learned at lona. Kent had been converted by 
missionaries sent out directly by the Eoman church; the East 
Anglians had been won by the Burgundian Felix, and the West 
Saxons by the Lombard Birinus. There was no such serious 
divergence in practice between the converts of these southern mis- 
sionaries, as between them and the northern Christians, but the 
universal authority of the Pope had not yet been so thoroughly 
established in the minds of western Christians as to assure the 



634] WILPRID 43 

supremacy of his representative at Canterbury over the disciples 
of Felix and Birinus. The tribal life was still strong ; the spirit 
of local independence still persistent and defiant. The bishop was 
only the royal chaplain, and had little influence and few interests 
outside of the lines which marked the limits of his master's 
authority. If he recognized the primacy of the archbishop of 
Canterbury at all, it was a primacy of prestige and dignity, rather 
than of actual authority. Sees were overgrown and unmanage- 
able. Their boundaries advanced, or receded, with the success or 
failure of the arms of the royal patrons. Churchmen were not all 
saints; and too often the bishops shared fully in the ambitious 
rivalries of their masters, and lent their influence to conquest and 
land spoiling, in order to enlarge their authority, or curtail that of 
some troublesome neighbor. The bishops, moreover, did not 
always wait for conquest; but interfered directly in each other's 
affairs. Bitter quarrels arose over jurisdiction or precedence, to 
be settled at last by an arbitrary judgment of the king, who was 
often himself an interested participant in the quarrel, and 
eager for a pretext under which to extend his authority. There 
must have been some community of life, some feeling of com- 
mon sympathy, some sense of common interest, but the idea 
of unity was at best only vaguely apprehended, and burned so 
feebly, that, alone and unaided, it could never have materially 
counteracted the political influence of the age. Here, then, was a 
great work to be done, to take advantage of the natural desire of 
Christian men for unity, to bring all the churches of Teutonic 
Britain into one organic system, united under one national primate. 
This great work, the union and organization of the National 
Church, is associated with the names of Wilfrid and Theodore. 

Wilfrid was born about the year 634. At fourteen, he attracted 

the attention of Eanfled, the queen of Oswy, and was sent by her 

to Lindisfarne for his education. Here, the lad's mind 

Wilfrid. 

was fired with a desire to see the great Christian world, 
of which his people knew so little; and especially to visit Eome, 
regarded by many as the first home of Christianity in the west. His 
royal patroness humored him in his visions of travel and learning, 
and finally sent him on his way in company with Benedict Biscop. 



44 THE CONFEDEEACIES OF TEUTONIC BRITAIN" 

After an absence of four years, he returned to his people, and was 
installed as abbot of Eipon. Travel and contact with the world 
had opened the eyes of the young monk to the isolation of his own 
people. He had looked upon the greatness of Eome; he had 
caught the spirit of her mighty traditions, and bowed to the 
authority of the greater Christendom, He returned, therefore, 
to denounce the peculiar practices of the Celtic church as schis- 
matic, and to demand that the church of Northumbria should order 
itself in harmony with the common practice of other Christian 
nations. There were many of the old disciples of Paulinus at 
hand, ready to second the earnest words of their young champion. 
The strife increased in bitterness, until, finally, King Oswy him- 
self became interested, and consented to summon a meeting of 
northern bishops to settle the dispute. 

The synod met at Whitby. Colman, the bishop of York, 

argued for the practices of the Celtic church, as the church of 

their fathers. Wilfrid pleaded the universal practice of 

The. synod of Christendom. But Oswy at last cut the knot in a sim- 

Whitby, 604. •> 

pie fashion of his own. "Is it true," he asked Colman, 

"that the keys of the kingdom of heaven were given to Peter by 
our Lord? Has any such power been given to Columba, the 
founder of the Scottish church?" "None," Colman was forced 
to answer. Then said the king, "If Peter be the door-keeper, he 
is the man for me." The king's logic was final. Colman and 
his monks withdrew, and once more the Northumbrians began to 
follow the customs which they had learned from Paulinus. 

Four years after the famous decision at Whitby, Theodore of 
Tarsus, a Greek monk, was appointed by Pope Yitalian to the 
^^ , vacant see of Canterbury. When he reached Canter- 

^f'c^^ntcl"^^ bury the following May, he found that a plague had 
hury, 665. recently devastated the island. The church, in par- 
ticular, had sufiiered severely ; several bishops had fallen at their 
posts ; and the people were awed and softened. Theodore saw his 
opportunity, and began at once a visitation of the several king- 
doms; reorganizing the churches, filling vacant sees, and introduc- 
ing a stricter conformity to the Roman system. In the north, he 
found a serious quarrel on between Wilfrid and Oswy. Wilfrid, 



673-680] HISTORIC COUNCILS OF THEODORE " 45 

after his success at Whitby, had been chosen bishop of York, and 
had gone to the continent to assure himself of a canonical conse- 
cration, but, upon his return, found that Oswy had installed the 
Celtic monk Chad in his place. Theodore interfered and deposed 
Chad on the ground of an uncauonical consecration, and estab- 
lished Wilfrid. Chad, however, had won the heart of Theodore 
by his humility, and, after reconseeration, was appointed to the 
vacant see of the Mercians at Lichfield. Theodore also made 
appointments to the vacant sees of Eochester, Dunwich, and Dor- 
chester. Thus, in the first two years of his administration, the 
new primate had filled five of the six sees of Britain. 

The existing sees, however, were unwieldy; some, as York, or 
the Mercian see, were very large. In 673, Theodore invited the 

bishops to meet him at Hertford, to consider the ques- 
muncasof ^'^^^ ^^ reorganization. All responded except Wine, the 
Hetiforders ^^^^^p of London, who was resting under the grave 

charge of simony. The gathering was not only the first 
council of the English church, but the first assembly in which rep- 
resentatives from all parts of the future nation met to discuss 
matters of common interest. Theodore proposed to subdivide the 
unwieldy sees, and place each subdivision under a particular bishop. 
Each bishop, moreover, was to confine himself to his own diocese ; 
the priest was to minister only in the diocese of the bishop from 
whom he received his license; monks also were to remain under 
their abbots. The plan of subdivision did not meet with the favor 
of the bishops; but the proposition to confine the activity of 
each official to his proper district was accepted, and a foundation 
laid for the further introduction of the orderly methods of 

the Eoman church. Seven years later, 680, Theodore 

HatfleM, 680. .. . , , ^ -^ , ' ' 

held another synod at Hatfield, at which the bishops 
accepted the decrees of the General Councils, and so formally 
decreed the orthodoxy of the new national church. 

Theodore was by no means disposed to accept the decision of 
the synod of Hertford upon the question of subdividing the sees 
as final, and the next year proceeded to divide the see of East 
Anglia, by creating a new bishop's seat at Elmham. In 676, he 
settled a long-standing quarrel of Cenwahl and Wulfhore, over the 



46 THE OOI^FEDEBACIES OF TEUTONIC BEITAIN 

see of Dorchester, by finally establishing an episcopal seat at 

Winchester, thus giving the West Saxon king a bishop at his 

own capital. The great see of York, however, under 

izationof the masterful Wilfrid, long defied Theodore's plan of 

the ChuvcJi. ' o r 

reorganization. It was the most unwieldy of all the 

sees, and included not only the lands of the Deirans and Berni- 
cians, but an indefinite region beyond the Forth over which 
Northumbrian kings had extended an overlordship, as well as the 
Lindiswara, south of the Humber. But the popularity and influ- 
ence of Wilfrid finally roused the jealousy of King Egfrid, Oswy's 
successor, and the king himself determined to divide the diocese. 
Wilfrid refused to yield; but Theodore supported the king, and, in 
a council at York, at which he presided, Wilfrid was deposed, and 
Bernicia formally separated from York, with its own bishop at 
Lindisfarne. Wilfrid possessed too much of the spirit of the later 
Becket to sabmit to what he regarded as an unjust invasion of his 
episcopal rights, and retired to Rome to appeal in person to the 
Pope. On his outward journey, he was thrown vipon the coast of 
Frisia, and here he spent the winter preaching to the heathen 
Frisians and laying the foundations for the future mission of his 
pupil Willibrord. The next year he reached Rome, but, when he 
returned to Northumbria with a papal decree directing that he be 
reinstated, the king and his witan treated the decree with con- 
tempt, and cast the unruly priest into prison. Mne months later, 
he was released, and, after more wandering, finally found a field 
congenial to his energetic temperament, among the heathen Saxons 
of the Andred's weald. Here Wilfrid labored five years. The 
people were apparently the most degraded and barbaric of any of 
the Teutonic settlers of Britain. They were ignorant of the sim- 
plest arts of life. The king, Ethelwald, appointed Wilfrid a resi- 
dence at Selsey, where he laid the foundations of the future 
bishopric. 

In the meanwhile, Theodore was steadily pushing forward his 
great plans for the organization of the church. At the request of 

King Ethelred, he divided the Mercian see, which was 
of Mercian almost as unwieldy as that of York, by establishing a 

separate bishop for the Hwiccas at Worcester, and an- 



681-689] EESULTS OF THEODORE'S WORK 47 

other for the Middle Angles at Leicester. The Lindiswara, who had 

lately been I'estored to the Mercian confederacy, also received a 

separate bishop, whose seat was fixed at Sidnacester; 

Bernicia Lichfield remained the episcopal seat of Mercia proper. 

divided, 681. »,i t •-,-,,-, a 

Iwo years later, iheodore further divided the see of 
Bernicia by establishing a bishop at Hexham for the Bernicians, 
and one at Abercorn for the Picts. 

In the year 686 Wilfrid made his peace with Theodore, and was 

allowed to return to York and be reinstated. His submission 

completed the triumph of Theodore. The plan of 

End of 

Theodore's Gregory for the establishment of a great northern 
primacy had been definitely abandoned for the plan 

of uniting all the Teutonic sees under the primate of Canterbury. 

After Wilfrid's return to York, one more see was established 
among the Magesaetas at Hereford. The next year, at 

Hereford, 6S8. ,, * * „ . , , • i , mi -■ -■ 

the advanced age of eighty-eight, Theodore passed 
quietly to his well-earned rest. 

Theodore is the great man of the seventh century. He created 
the national church. When he came, in 669, he found six dis- 
cordant sees, overgrown and unwieldy for administrative 
Theodore's purposcs. When he laid down his work twenty years 
later, the six had been broken up into fifteen, and all 
united under the close supervision of the archbishop of Canter- 
bury. There was in all the west no ecclesiastical province which 
y^^g was in better stead, or more efficiently organized. But 

^ofnatumai ^^^^1 ^^ important as the work of Theodore for the 
Enaiand. church, was his influence upon the future political 
development of the Teutonic tribes of Britain. The original 
smaller tribal divisions were breaking down. The great confeder- 
acies were passing into permanent federations. But the five great 
states of Mercia, Northumbria, Wessex, East Anglia, and Kent 
still stood over against each other as fiercely jealous and hostile as 
ever. The patient teaching of the monks had done much to 
assuage the fires of ancient feuds ; still, if a permanent union were 
ever secured, apparently, it must be by the sword. But, under 
Theodore, the church, with its perfected territorial organization, 
recognizing but one country and one people, called up a new vision 



48 THE CONFEDERACIES OF TEUTONIC BEITAIN 

of unity, "clothed with a sacred form and surrounded with divine 
sanction," embodied in the one national primate, and expressing 
its will through the legislative action of one national coun- 
cil. That this new organization was ecclesiastical, made its 
influence none the less national and political. Men had not yet 
difl^erentiated church and state, and it was only a step from the 
national ecclesiastical organization to a national political organiza- 
tion ; from the local organization of the bishoprics of Theodore to 
the shire organizations of Ine ; from the national council of the 
church to the national council of the state; from the national 
primate to the national king. 

In other ways, also, Theodore assisted in laying deep and stable 

the foundations of the England to come. His penitential system 

instilled into the barbaric mind a new conception of vice 

encesof and crime as sin as'ainst God; thus preparing a founda- 

TJieodore. j. i. o 

tion for the work of the future Glanvilles and Bractons, 
in the quickening moral sense of the people. His school at Can- 
terbury, under the direction of his friend, the abbot Hadrian, gave 
instruction in Latin and Greek, arithmetic and astronomy, and 
the themes of Holy Scripture — the forerunner of the great schools 
of Jarrow and York. He also did much to diffuse a knowledge of 
the stately Gregorian music, which had been as yet hardly known 
outside the borders of Kent. 

It must not be forgotten, however, that Theodore is not the 
only great name which the church of this era has given to English 

history. We have already seen Wilfrid struggling in 
Wilfrid's his own way to solve the Northumbrian church prob- 

lems. The course of his life after the death of Theo- 
dore continued as stormy as ever. He quarreled with the successors 
of Egfrid and Theodore and wasted his declining years between 
English synods and the papal curia in a vain attempt to recover 
his lost honors. He died at Oundle in 709. 

Wilfrid was one of those turbulent energetic natures, whose 
lot it is to make a great stir in the world, and so get credit for an 
influence and importance which they do not really deserve. His 
old friend, Benedict Biscop, on the other hand, was a quiet, 
unassuming man, whose merits later generations have hardl}^ rec- 



670-687] CUTHBEET AND CAEDMOIST 49 

ognized. He was tlie first to introduce stained glass, bringing 
glass workers from Gaul, in order to provide his own monastery 
Benedict ^^ Wearmouth. He founded the famous monastery and 
Biscop. more famous school at Jarrow, going himself to Borne to 

procure books and pictures for its library. "To his enlightened 
zeal, the world owes Bede, the school of York, and the great 
Alcuin." 

To this era belong also the names of Cuthbert, consecrated 
bishop of Lindisfarne by Theodore, famous peasant preacher and 

saint, who spent the greater part of his life among the 
ffe(Fes7^^^*' I'^moter mountain settlements of Northumbria, "from 

whose roughness and poverty other teachers turned 
aside"; Caedmon, also, the peasant Milton, the cowherd of 
Whitby, whose untutored lips, touched by divine vision, 'sang of 

the creation of the world,' the 'origin of man,' . . . 
died about 'of the mcarnation, 'passion and resurrection of 

Christ,' ... 'of the terror of future punishment, the 
horror of hell pangs, and the Joys of heaven,' — "the first great 
English song." 

In the year 670, Oswy, first of English royal saints, had passed 
to his grave. Egfrid, his son and successor, was a very difl:erent 

man from his peace-loving father. He tore the Lindis- 
Uw North wara from Wulfhere of Mercia; he revived the long 

feud with his Celtic neighbors, driving them out of 
Cumbria, and taking possession of the south bank of the Solway to 
the sea. But, in an evil hour, he determined to conquer the 
Picts; who, it seems, were still as troublesome and incorrigible as 
in the days of Agricola. He gathered his Northumbrian thanes, 
and, leading them across the Forth, disappeared among the wild 
glens of the Pict land. Keither he nor his army ever returned. 
Nechtans- ^^^ solitary fugitive, after long wanderings among the 
mere, 685. mountains, and after incredible hardships, at last came 
back to tell how King Egfrid and his thanes fell by the shores of 
the North Sea, 'bitten to death' by the sword of the Pict. 

ISTorthumbria never recovered again. Her glory lay in the 
corpse-ring, which surrounded her fallen lord, "in the far-off 
moorland of Nechtansmere." For twenty years, Eldfrid, the dead 



50 THE CONFEDEEACIES OF TEUTONIC BRITAIN 

king's brother, continued to hold Northumbria together. But, 

after his death, evil days fell fast upon the North Humber lands. 

The witan dominated in the councils of the nation, and 

Permanent their Quarrels filled the land with disorder. In a 

decline of t- 

Northum- period of thirty-eight years, nine different kings rapidly 
succeeded each other. Of these, three were assassin- 
ated; five were formally deposed, one being afterward executed 
for presuming to return from exile. 

The fall of Egfrid at Nechtansmere left the Mercians and the 
West Saxons sole competitors for the overlordship of Britain. 
J. g , But, as yet, the West Saxons had given little promise 
Wessex. Qf their great future. Some petty conquests of Cenwahl 

(643-672), on the Avon and among the Mendip hills, by which he 
extended his borders to the Parret in Somerset, could hardly offset 
the effect of Wulfhere's conquest in 661, when he not only drove 
the West Saxons out of the North Thames basin, but tore from 
them the eastern conquests of Ceawlin, including the Isle of 
Wight, and added them to the lands of the king of Sussex, thus 
raising a new and worthy rival to Wessex south of the Thames. 
Cenwahl managed to hold the remnant of his kingdom together 
until his death in 672. But, during the thirteen years following, 
even this remnant was still further divided and torn by the rivalries 
of petty kings. The affairs of Wessex were then, perhaps, at 
their lowest ebb. 

In 685, Cadwalla, one of the petty kings of the West Saxons, 
fought his way to supremacy over his fellows, and once more suc- 
ceeded in drawing the fragments of Cenwahl's kingdom 
Wessex. together. Two years later, he ravaged Sussex, and 
td^dealhrS regained what Wulf here had given to its king. Through 
Sussex, he entered Kent, and, overrunning the country 
in two successive years, compelled the people to acknowledge his 
lordship. In 688, Ine became king of the West Saxons. In 
him the Mercian kings found a rival worthy of all 
their strength. He completed the conquest of Somer- 
set, and secured his new territories by a wooden fort on the Tone, 
the modern Taunton. In 715, he was called upon to measure "his 
strength with Ceolred of Mercia, at Wamborough ; and, although 



715-751] INE IN WESSEX 51 

neither side could claim a victory, Ine prevented the Mercians from 
gaining a foothold south of the Thames. All the country was now 
his between the Thames and the sea, and from Dorset to Thanet. 
Within these borders, Ine sought to lay the foundation of a 
real kingdom, by defining the power of his administrative officers. 
The Laws ^^^ S^^^^S Uniformity to the customary law by reduc- 
ofine. ing j^ f^Q a code. The shire here first appears as the 

territorial unit of the Judicial administration. The ealdorman is 
responsible for the arrest of the criminal in his shire; if he allows 
him to escape, he forfeits his office. Military service, thefyt-d, is 
required of all, high or low; and heavy fines, but graded to the 
rank of the laggard, are prescribed for failure to respond to the 
call to arms. Like the laws of Ethelbert, these of Ine also show 
the influence of the priest. Sunday labor is prohibited; a merci- 
ful ordinance when the labor of the community was performed largely 
by serfs. The precincts of the king's palace, or a bishop's palace, 
are sacred against acts of violence, and are equally protected by a 
fine of one hundred and twenty shillings, — the hurg-hryce. In 
these laws, the conquered Briton appears as a bondsman, — 
tlieoio tvealh; but there is also mention of the Welsh freeman with 
one hide of land, and of the Welsh rent-paying tenant; the king 
also has his mounted Welshmen. There is also the Welsh noble, 
with five hides of land. 

The later days of Ine were covered with gloom. His old age 
was saddened by domestic intrigue and revolt, the curse of the 

early Teutonic kingdom. Then, after thirty-six years 
days of Ine. ^^ thankless toil, Ine threw down his work in disgust, 

and, like so many of his peers, must go a pilgriming to 
Eome. The peace which he sought came to him on the way. 

While the fortunes of Wessex were rising, those of Mercia were 
declining. There is no great king after the death of Wulfhere 

(675) until we reach the era of Ethelbald, when once 
ofMefcS^ more a Mercian king threatens the independence of 
iw-fsif'^' Wessex ; but a defeat at the hands of a Northumbrian 

king, whose lands Ethelbald had invaded, so shattered 
his strength, that his hold upon the south was weakened, and he 
was compelled to face a revolt of Cuthred, the new vassal king 



52 THE CONFEDERACIES OP TEUTONIC BRITAIN 

of Wessex. After a long struggle, Cuthred won a decisive 
victory at Burford in Oxfordshire. No more glorious day 
had yet dawned in West Saxon history. All the vassal kings 
of the Mercian overlord, the kings of Kent, Sussex, and Essex, 
besides those of his own Mercia, had followed him to that 
fatal field. Opposed were the people of Wessex, marshaled under 
the famous golden dragon, and fighting for independence. The 
victory was final; the great Mercian confederacy was shat- 
tered, and no shred of Ethelbald's power south of the Thames 
remained. Six years later, 757, Ethclbald was foully slain at 
night by his own people. 

No account of the reigns of Ine and Ethelbald would be com- 
plete that did not mention their great contemporary, Bede, the 
„^^j^ first English historian. He was born, probably, in the 

^75-755. very year of Theodore's historic council at Hertford. 

At seven, he was put under the instruction of Benedict Biscop, 
who had shortly before built his monastery at Wearmouth. Bede 
very early committed himself to the quiet and uneventful life of 
the scholar. He passed his years between Wearmouth and the 
later foundation of Jarrow. Now and then, echoes from the busy, 
turbulent world outside reached him. in his quiet retreat; but 
never to allure him from his patient round of "reading, teaching, 
and writing." One marvels at what he accomplished. The 
library, which his old master had brought from Eome for the two 
monastery schools, was his sole workshop. "I am my own secre- 
tary," he writes ; "I make my own notes ; I am my own librarian. " 
Yet, he mastered the knowledge of the time, and left a list of 
thirty-seven works to testify to his industry. He revived for 
England the traditions of the older culture of the almost 
forgotten classical world, and impressed the warlike thanes of 
Northumbria with "the quiet grandeur of a life con- 
''EcrirMasUc- gecrated to knowledge." His reputation to-day rests 
thc'^in^Ts'" ^ipoii liis "Ecclesiastical History of the Nation of 
the Angles," — the beginning of authentic English 
history; the only light to cast a gleam into the darkness which 
separates the Britain of Gildas from the Britain of Ine and 
Ethelbald. 



757-796] OFFA IN MERCIA 53 

Under the powerful Offa, who ruled Mercia from 757-796, the 
long struggle for supremacy seemed again about to be decided in favor 
Q^^ of the middle kingdom. Of the first year of his reign, 

^owerai little is known; but, in 771, we find him parceling out 
zenith. the lands of Sussex, with the kings of Wessex and Kent 

acting as attesting parties; evidence that, even at this date, OflEa 
had established himself south of the Thames, and that Wessex had 
again lost her independence. His greatest wars, however, were 
waged against the Welsh, whom he drove out of the valley of the 
Severn, advancing his own borders to the Wye. This conquest he 
secured by the introduction of colonists and the erection of a 
"Offa's frontier rampart, the famous "OfPa's Dyke," connecting 

-Di/fce." the lower Severn and the Dee. The line of "Offa's 

Dyke" has remained virtually the permanent boundary between 
Wales and England. 

Apparently, Ofi:a accepted the threefold division of Teutonic 
Britain as final, and sought to secure conformity to this 

arrangement in the organization of the church, by rais- 
metropolitan ing the see of Lichfield to metropolitan honors, coor- 

dinate in authority with Canterbury and York, the 
archiepiscopal dignity of the latter having been restored in 735. 
The pope granted Offa's request, and, for thirteen years, Mercia 
could boast of an archbishop of its own. 

Offa died in 796, and, for a few years, Mercia maintained the 
position to which he had elevated her. Then, one by one, the 
achievements of Offa were undone. The primacy of Lichfield 
was abandoned, and the under-kings slipped back again into their 

old independence. In 802, the young Egbert, of the 
8U2-S39' royal house of Wessex, returned from the court of 

Charles the Great, whither he had been driven by the 
persecutions of Offa. The years which he had spent abroad 
had not been lost. He had been within that charmed circle 
which surrounded the mighty Frank. He bad looked upon a 
Teutonic monarchy at its best, and had doubtless studied deep and 
long the art of ruling men; but most, the peculiar institutions 
which lay at the basis of the Frankish system. How much he 
brought back with him, and Just what he introduced into the 



54 THE CONFEDERACIES OF TEUTONIC BEITAIN [egbert 

English system, we shall never know; but the striking resem- 
blances of English and Frankish institutions of the ninth century 
can not all be ascribed to similarity of Teutonic origin. For the 
first thirteen years of his reign, Egbert seems to have been rally- 
ing the shattered forces of his kingdom and nourishing its strength. 
In 814, he began the series of operations against the West Welsh, 
Cornwall, which resulted in the final subjugation of the penin- 
sula. English colonization, however, stopped at the 
Tamar. For centuries, the Cornishmen retained their 
own dialect, and enjoyed a semi-independence. Even as late as the 
seventeenth century, tliere survived a Cornish parliament, with 
independence enough to arrest a king's sheriff and hold him until 
released by a special order of the English parliament. 

From West Wales, Egbert returned to protect his northern 
frontiers against an adyance of the Mercians. The armies met at 
Eiiandun Ellandun, in Wiltshire. The Mercians were utterly 
*^5- routed, and Egbert passed at once to the overlordship 

of the region south of the Thames. The next year, the East 
Angles imitated the example of Wessex ; renounced the Mercian 
dependence, and added their strength to the growing power of 
Egbert. Again and again, the allies smote the sinking Mercians. 
Two successive kings, and five great ealdormen, were slain in bat- 
tle. A third king found refuge in exile. When, in 829, Egbert 
made a royal progress through Mercia, it was practically his, 
as much as Wessex. The Northumbrians alone remained, but a 
century of discord had so weakened their power, that only madness 
could induce their king, Eanred, to measure swords with the vic- 
tor of Ellandun. The challenge of Egbert, therefore, was sufficient 
to bring Eanred to his southern border, there to acknowledge the 
supremacy of the king of the West Saxons, and enter the new con- 
federacy as a vassal king. 

By the end of 830, with the exception of Celtic Strathclyde, all 
the lands south of the line of the Forth and the Solway had sub- 
mitted to Egbert. Through all this magnificent region, the princes, 
whether Celt or Teuton, acknowledged the overlordship of the 
southern king. The vague recognition of this overlordship, how- 
ever, did not constitute these vassal states into a kingdom or an 



830-839] THE KIl^'GDOM OF EGBERT 55 

empire, still less into a national state. ^ Such terms applied here 
are only confusing and misleading. Egbert had, after all, only 

brought together such another confederacy as that which 
of the so- once obeyed Oswald or Offa; only larger in extent, and, 
'•Ki7igdomof for the moment, confronted by no possible rival 

north or south. Yet, it had been established by the 
sword, and was held together only by threat of the sword. Its 
size, moreover, was a source of weakness rather than strength, and 
made the advent of reaction inevitable. It possessed no new ele- 
ments of permanence. The monarchy, as an institution, was 
firmly established in the minds of the people. The church had 
thrown around it the charm of special sanctions, borrowed from 
the imagery and rites of the Old Testament. Yet, the monarchy 
was not one, but many ; and, although the right of the witan to 
select the sovereign was generally recognized, the unwritten laws 
of the tribes also recognized the claim of certain royal families, 
the male members of which were known as Etlielings^ to the exclu- 
sive enjoyment of the royal title in their several states. Only com- 
plete extermination could dissolve this claim, or save the king 
who held his authority by conquest from the challenge of some 
fugitive rival of the favored blood. As long as this idea of the 
ineradicable nature of the hereditary claims of each royal family 
survived in the laws of Mercians or East Anglians, of Northnm- 
bria or Kent, any consolidation of the kingdoms into an organized 
state, under one ^sole king, and administered through all its 
parts by his appointed representatives, was impossible. At best, 
it could be merely a question of time before the confederacy of 
Egbert, also, should break up, and the constituent kingdoms 
regroup themselves about new centers. 

And yet this did not happen. A new element, the Danish, 
now violently obtruded itself into the history of the English 
tribes, and, although the great part of the conquests of Egbert were, 
for the time, torn from the grasp of his successors, though Wes- 
sex itself was foully smitten, arid her strength shattered; yet, 

^For significance of term Bretwalde, as used by Chronicle, etc., of. 
Freeman, Norman Conquest, I, Append. A., and Stubbs, C. H., I, pp. 180 
and 181. 



56 THE CON"FEDERAOIES OE TEUTONIC BRITAIN" [eqbert 

with each successive defeat, her kings returned to the conflict more 
desperate and more determined than ever, and, at last, succeeded 
The Confcd ^^ regaining not only their old position, but much 
cracy of more. For, in the long struggle, not only were all other 

EgJiert torn ' & et> : j 

hij the royal lines exterminated, and the old tribal partitions 

irruption of J ' ^ 

the Danes. ^s political divisions erased, but the many dominions 
v/ere at last fused into one kingdom, and the many lordships 
absorbed in one kingship. In a word, Teutonic Britain became 
England, and the kings of the West Saxons became kings of the 
English. The progress of these changes constitutes the subject 
matter of the next chapter of English history. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE DANISH WARS. ALFRED THE GREAT AND THE FOUNDING 
OF THE EN^GLISil KINGDOM 

THE FAMILY OF ALFRED 

Egbert, 802-839 

Ethelwulf, 839-855, d. 858 

\ 

I I I I 

Ethelbald, 855-800 Efclielbert, 8C0-S6G Ethelred, SG6-S71 Alfred, 871-901 



Edward tho Elder, 901-9l'5 Etliel.leda, f7. 910. 

I "The Lady of tlie Mercians" 

I I I = Ethelred, Ealdorman of 

Athelstan, 925-940 Edmund, 9-10-9-16 Edred, 94G-955 Mercia. 

\ 

I 1 

Edwy, 955-959 Edgar, 959-975 

For two hundred years, Britain had received no fresh accessions 
of Teutonic life from beyond the seas; but, in the closing years of 
the eighth century, a new wave began to break upon the eastern 
shore, and, increasing in volume with the opening of the ninth century 
threatened to sweej) away the older Teutonic settlers, as the Angles 
and Saxons had once overwhelmed and swept away the remnant of 
the Britons. This new Germanic population came from the two 
great peninsulas which separate the waters of the Baltic from 
the waters of the North Sea. The people of Britain called them 
Danes; the Irish, whose eastern coasts were harried by them as 
severely as the coasts of Britain, knew them as Ostmen, or Eastmen; 
the people of the continent, as Northmen. The name which they 
themselves used was Vikings, or Creehnen. They were of 
Teutonic stock, like the Angles and Saxons, and possessed in gen- 
eral the same institutions. 

57 



58 THE DANISH WARS [egbert 

The first experience of the inhabitants of Britain with these 
new troublers of the peace of the island dates as far back as the 
year 787, when three strange crafts suddenly .appeared 
anceofthe before the town of Warham, in Dorset. The simple- 
minded reeve^ ignorant of the true character of the 
strangers, went out to collect his port dnes, and bring the sup- 
posed mercha-nts to the king, as was his duty; but was straightway 
slain for his pains. It was not, however, until six years later, 
that the Northmen gave the people of Britain a fore- 
taste of the mischief which they might expect at their 
hands, when they swooped down upon Lindisfarne and plundered 
its famous church. The next year, they returned, and Benedict 
Biscop's settlements at Wearmouth and Jarrow suffered the same 
fate. The Christian ruffians of the age generally passed by such 
retreats. The legends of hoarded wealth failed to rouse their 
cupidity to the extent of braving the wrath of the protecting 
saints. But the appeals and imprecations of shaveling monks, 
who had forgotten how to fight, only roused the derision of the 
pagan ISTorthmen and added to the sport of the plundering. 

In tl)e year 795, they reached Ireland, and began a series of 
depredations on the eastern coast, which continued for more than 

^7, m t, fi quarter of a century. In 832, the pirate king Thorkil 
TheN(wthmcn ^ .; ' i to 

in Ireland. made a permanent settlement on the north coast, and 
established his capital at Armagh. About the same time, another 
settlement was made at Limerick ; a little later others were made 
at Dublin and, in the next century, at Waterford and Cork. 

The first comers were probably from Norway, and had used 
only the northern route, which lay directly across the North Sea; 
J r asedac- ^^^^ ^^ ^^^^ ^^ ^^^^^ fact, no doubt, that the lower coasts of 
tmtyoftiw Britain owed the long immunity from attack which fol- 

Danca after o j 

tJied^Mhnf lowed the plunder of Lindisfarne and Jarrow. But, 

Charleii the ^ ' 

Great, 814. after the death of Charles the Great, the people of 
the Danish peninsula began to take part in these piratical expedi- 
tions, picking their way along the coasts of the modern Holland and 
Belgium, running their long black crafts up into each river inlet, in 
search of monastery or unprotected river town for plunder. Each 
year they extended their depredations farther to the west; spread- 



833-842] THE DA^TES IX SOUTHERN 15KITA I NT 59 

ing terror before them, and leaving a memory of horror behind 
them. Homesteads were burned, men slaughtered, children tossed 
on pikes, and women were driven away into slavery; monasteries 
were rifled, churches destroyed, and priests slain at their altars. 
Eumor everywhere added to the actual horrors of these scenes. 
The courage of strong men melted as in the presence of the pes- 
tilence. The pious saw the hand of God, who, out of the mysteri- 
ous mists of the boundless sea, had let slip these, liis avengers, to 
punish his people for their sins. 

At last, in the year 833, a fleet of twenty-five vessels 

Firist descent ' x/ ' ^ 

upon South appeared in the mouth of the Thames, and ravaged the 
little island of Slieppey. In 834, another band, esti- 
mated at twelve hundred strong, made a landing in Dorset. 
Egbert hastened to meet them, but was virtually defeated; the next 
Henaestdun ^^^^^ however, at Hengestdun, he succeeded in winning a 
^^^' brilliant victory over a third horde, which had 

descended from Ireland upon Cornwall. He was not again molested 
during his reign. The memory of the slaughter at Hengestdun 
was enough to keep the Danes at bay until the accession of 
Ethelwnlf. 

With Ethelwulf, the attempts of the Danes npon south Britain 
began again. The new king, like his contemporary, Louis the 
Pious, was entirely unfitted for the work to which 
frmfads^a/ter destiny had appointed him; a fairly respectable monk 
E'^beii' having been spoiled in making a king. Each ealdorman 
was left to do the best he could for his own district; 
and a noble record these ealdormen made, in glaring contrast 
with the shameful incompetency of the king. Sometimes the 
ealdormen were successful, as when Eanulf and Osric won a victory 
at the mouth of the Parret in 848; but more frequently the 
ealdorman fell in hopeless battle, as Ethelhelm at Portland, or 
Herebryht in the Fen country, or he retired, beaten, to die of his 
wounds, as Wulfheard after Southampton. The climax was 
reached in 842, when London and Rochester were sacked, their 
population scattered, and the cities left in ruin. 

The suffering of those who survived these raids can hardly be 
overdrawn. Homes were broken up, the means of livelihood 



60 THE DANISH WAES [ 



Etheltvulf 



destroyed, and families scattered never to be reunited. In 844, 

the devastations of tlie country had become so widely extended, that 
Ethelwulf proposed a remission of the royal rents as a 

fhetuffelt partial relief. At the time of his death in 858, the indi- 

0/ the gent poor, always the first to suifer in "hard times," had 

so increased in numbers, that the king made special 

provision in his will for feeding and clothing them at the expense 

of the royal estates. 

Thus far the invaders had come mostly in detached bands of a 

few hundred warriors, bent only upon securing plunder, and mak- 
ing off with it before a sufficient force could be gathered 

Etheiwiaf's to punish them. But, in the year 850, a fleet of three 

victory ■'^ ) J 3 

atockiey, hundred and fifty ships, carrying possibly ten or twelve 
thousand men, wintered at Sheppey, and, in the early 
spring, boldly entered the Thames. Canterbury, and London for 
the second time, had to pay dearly for their prominence among 
the cities of the southeast. Beorhtwulf , the vassal king of Mercia, 
threw himself in the path of the invaders, but was defeated and his 
army scattered. Then the host crossed into Surrey, but at 
Ockley Ethelwulf met them at the head of the "West Saxon fyrd, 
and administered such a beating, that the "memory of the great 
slaughter of heathen" long remained in Saxon tradition. Ethel- 
wulf, however, seems to have taken little advantage of his victory, 
wasting his strength in a useless war upon the Welsh; while his 
ealdormen struggled alone to dislodge the Danes from Thanet and 
other places where they had gained a permanent footing. When, 
in 855, another horde gathered at Sheppey, preparatory to a 
descent upon the neighboring coasts in the spring, the king seized 
the moment to go on a pilgrimage to Rome, quite the "fad" among 
the rich saints of the day. So, to Rome he went, with another 
war cloud about to burst upon his people; and the witan, justly 
indignant, held a meeting at Selwood, and, exercising their consti- 
tutional right of deposition, the corollary of their right of election, 
made Ethelbald, the eldest son, king. 

Ethelwulf returned in 856, but had to content himself with an 
under-kingdom made up of Kent, Essex, Surrey, and Sussex. He 
survived only two years, and then his sons followed him in quick 



860-870] HEALFDENE AND IVAR THE BOifELESS 61 

succession. When Ethelbald died, in 860, the second brother, 
Ethelbert, was already the vassal king of Kent, but, instead of 

appointing a successor in Kent, he retained both crowns, 
Etheiivuif ^^^ ^^^^^ ^^® existence of Kent as a separate kingdom 

came to an end. After six years, death again made way 
for another of Ethelwulf 's sons, and Ethelred became king. Dur- 
ing Ethelbert's reign, the old capital, Winchester, had been taken 
and sacked by the Danes, and eastern Kent overrun. The Danes, 
moreover, had ^ been showing alarming intentions of permanently 
establishing themselves upon English soil. In the year 866, the 

first of Etbelred's reign, a great host landed in East 
Nortimm- Angha, under the leadership oi the famous chiefs, 

Healfdene and Ivar. The East Anglians saved them- 
selves for the time by supjjlying the invaders with provisions and 
horses, and in the spring, saw the horde disappear to the northwest, 
upon a regular inland campaign. The Danes swept through Lindsey, 
devouring the country and burning what they could not carry off. 

The Humber was crossed and Deira overrun. In 
November, ' J^ovcmber, York fell. Then the two rival kinffs of 

867 

Northumbria, Ella and Osbert, whose strife had made 
their country a prey to the Danes, arranged their differences, and 
united for the recovery of the northern capital ; but their reckless 
courage only gave the enemy a better opportunity for slaughter. 
Both kings were slain under the walls of York, and the Northum- 
brian army, with its eight ealdormen, dispersed. Healfdene 
established himself at York, and set up a puppet, one Egbert, over 
the Bernicians. 

In the meanwhile, Ivar, known by the curious nickname of "the 
Boneless," advanced into Mercia, and established himself in 

Nottingham. Mercia would have followed the fate of 

Tvctf **tlip 

Boneless." Northumbria had not Ethelred marched to the aid of 

in Mercia 

and East the under-king, Burgred, at the head of the West 
Saxons. Alfred appears in this campaign holding high 
command under his brother, and is henceforth one of the prom- 
inent figures in the wars. The Danes were disheartened by the 
vigorous campaigning of the West Saxon princes, and agreed to 
retire across the Humber. But the year 870 saw them again on 



62 THE DANISH WARS [etheleed 

the war path, under the same Ivar, "the Boneless," and heading 
toward East Anglia. The Lindiswara were reduced, and the Fen 
country was overwhelmed. In East Anglia, the under king, 
Edmund, attempted to face them, but was routed, taken, and 
afterwards, in company with his bishop, Humbert of Elmham, 
tied to a tree and shot to death with arrows. He is 
''Edmund known in church traditions as ' 'the Martyr, ' ' — the Eng- 

flip ]!^(lT'fH7* '* 

lish St, Sebastian. To the panic-stricken people, the 
struggle was rapidly assuming the aspect of a religious war. The 
invaders turned their fury particularly upon the visible representa- 
tives of tlie Christian faith. Every church edifice in the line of 
march was burned. The monks of Medehamstede, the later Peter- 
borough, were massacred without mercy. The monks of other 
monastic communities, as Croyland and Ely, probably shared the 
same fate. The bishop of Liiidsey escaped only by hasty flight, 
but other priests, like Humbert of Elmham, died with their 
people. The episcopal sees were broken up, and the flocks scat- 
tered. Nearly a century passed before Lindsey and Elmham again 
saw a bishop. Dunwich never recovered. 

The Danes had already prepared themselves to hold what they 
had won in East Anglia, by constructing elaborate earthworks at 

Thetford, the remains of which, even to-day, cover 
of Battles," about thirteen acres. Their purpose, apparently, was 

not to settle as colonists, but to make East Anglia a 
base in operating against the richer country which lay to the 
west. Accordingly, in 871, with numbers greatly strengthened by 
later accessions, under Healfdene and "a host of jarls," they took 
the old Eoman road, the Icknield street, and advanced directly 
upon Wessex. The moment was a critical one in English history. 
Northumbria and East Anglia were already conquered; the 
strength of Mercia was broken; only Wessex remained, the last 
bulwark of England. If the West Saxons failed now, the end was 
near. The opening of the year, long known as the "year of battles," 
was discouraging enough. The Danes took up a strong position 
at Eeading, between the Thames and the Kennet, where they 
fortified themselves, as was now their custom. Then they began 
to spread out over the country in search of forage ; for a medieval 



87i] THE YEAR OF BATTLES 63 

* army, even of civilized nations, had no other way of sustaining 
itself in the field. King Ethelred and Alfred Etheling, however, 
soon put a stop to the foraging by driving the Danes behind their 
earthworks. They had then only to sit down to a regular siege, 
and hunger would soon have compelled the Danes to treat. Such 
simple tactics were followed later with great success. But the 
enthusiasm of the West Saxons could not be restrained, and, in an 
attempt to carry the camp by storm, they were beaten off with 
great slaughter and compelled to retire up the Thames, where a 
second battle was fought at Ashdown. Here, though forced to 
fight at a great disadvantage, the West Saxon princes were success- 
ful, and compelled the Danes again to retire upon Heading. 
Within two weeks, a third battle followed at Basing, and still a 
fourth at Merton, in Surrey. 

The fatigue and anxiety of such vigorous campaigning told 

heavily upon King Ethelred, who finally broke under the strain, 

and died about a fortnight after Merton. Alfred, who 

of Alfred, had contributed not a little to the successes of the 

871. 

army, who had endeared himself to his men by the 
exhibition of true soldierly qualities, and had won their confidence 
by his wisdom and skill as a leader, was at once selected as king. 
Two sons survived Ethelred, but the law of strict hereditary suc- 
cession had not yet been established. These were days, moreover, 
when regal honors were neither to be lightly sought nor lightly 
conferred ; so the young children of Ethelred were set aside, and 
the young man Alfred, probably in his twenty-sixth year, became 
king, the "people's darling," the hope of the England to be. 

Alfred had little time for fetes or celebrations, and at once 
addressed himself to the serious problem of the hour: how to rid 

his eastern kingdom of the Danes and restore asrain his 

The Danes . _,^. ° 

retire from smitten couutry. Withm a month, he brouffht his 

TV^esscx. ' o 

battle-weary people to face their foes again at Wilton, 
whither they had recently advanced from their old camp at Read- 
ing. The Danes won the day, but the hard fighting was beginning 
to tell upon their strength, for they had been forced to fight nine 
pitched battles in five months. They were glad, therefore, to take 
advantage of their last victory and retire from Wessex. 



64 THE DANISH WARS [alfred 

The next position of the Danish army was on the lower' 
Thames, near London. Here, however, the country had already 
been stripped bsire, and they were soon compelled to 
ViEaScrn ^®®^ ^ ^^®^*^ camp at Torksey, on the Trent, whence they 
rnidmrth- ^^gan operations upon Mercia, and, in a short time, 
umbria, reduced all the eastern and central parts. Bnrgred, 

the last Mercian king of the old line, apparently, saw 
little chance of success in continuing the struggle, and took him- 
self off to Eome to die. As in Northumbria, Healfdene set up 
a puppet king over the parts of Mercia which he did not care to 
take for his people ; but the parts about Leicester, Nottingham, 
Derby, Stamford, and Lincoln he divided among his followers. 
These towns, the famous "Five Boroughs," soon became 
Bm-ough^ ' vigorous centers of Danish life. We do not know the 
terms upon which the Danes settled, but it is not likely 
that they disturbed the tillers of the soil, who were now practically 
serfs over all England. It is more likely that they simply ejected 
the landowners and lived upon the labor of their tenants. 

The memory of the old life of plunder, however, was still too 
strong upon the Danes to allow them to settle down into quiet land- 
lords, and, leaving a sufficient force to hold what they 
^^f/'t''!''',,,^ had won, they continued to lead out their armies both 

( (Hti f>lt U s TUG ' *J 

thenorlh^ north and south, to plunder the country and exhaust 
the resources of the states which still survived. In 
the spring of 875, Healfdene led a horde up the west coast, to 
complete the pillage of North umbria. Carlisle was left in ruins, 
and so remained until restored by William Rufas more than two 
hundred years later. The Britons of Strathclyde and the Picts of 
Galloway bowed to the storm. Then Bernicia, which had been 
spared in 867, was also compelled to yield up its treasures. Lin- 
disfarne, which had recovered somewhat from the raid of 793, was 
again destroyed, and every monastery from sea to sea, it is said, 
shared the same fate. 

The north now lay in ashes. The libraries of Jarrow and 
York, associated wdth the great names of Bede and Alcuin, had gone 
up in flames. The "art treasures" and the "book treasures" so 
carefully gathered by Benedict Biscop had been either destroyed or 



876] GUTHRUM IN WESSES: 65 

scattered. The service of the church had been supplanted by 

the bloody feasts of Odin and Thor, and the successors of Wilfrid 

and Cuthbert either been slain at their altars or driven 

Permanent gut to wauder in strange lands. Then, when there was 

settlement ° 

'^^^l^g nothing left to plunder, the booty thirst of Healfdene 

and his pirates seemed to be satisfied, and they 
began in serious earnest to make themselves homes in the land 
which they had desolated. To know how numerous and widely 
extended these settlements were, then and later, the student has 
only to take a modern map and note the town names of eastern, 
middle, and northern England. Wherever he finds an English 
town with the ending bi/, he may know that he is on the track of 
Healfdene and other Danes, who, like him, came to rob and 
pillage, but, weary of plunder at last, settled down into peaceable 
landowners. 

While Healfdene was thus clearing the ground for the planting 

of Danish communities in the north, Guthrum, an East Anglian 

Dane, who had succeeded Ivar, "the Boneless," gatli- 

Gutiirum gj.g(j ^ fleet, and, in the spring of 87G, took to the sea. 

invades ' ' i » ' 

Trcsseic, Passing around Kent and sailing westward, he made a 

junction with a second fleet, coming probably from Ire- 
land, and brought the combined hordes to land at Wareham, in 
Dorset. Here, as at Eeading, the Danes fortified themselves, and 
began to overrun the surrounding country, extending their depre- 
dations over the entire region. In the spring, they advanced to 
Exeter, which a band of their comrades had seized the year before. 
Alfred followed warily, crippled, no doubt, by the instability and 
irregularity of the fyrd, the "minute men" of early English his- 
tory; avoiding pitched battles, he could yet cut oif foraging 
parties and prevent the Danes from getting supplies. Thus, at 
Exeter, as at Wareham, hunger, the vigorous ally of Alfred, soon 
compelled the Danes to move, and a part of the horde marched 
into Mercia and took up a third station at Gloucester. 

Medieval armies, by common consent, were accustomed to dis- 
band in the winter months and return to their homes. The 
Danes, however, by their custom of establishing permanent for- 
tified camps, were able to winter m the field and so had a great 



66 THE BAXISIT WARS [ai.fi.f.d 

advantage over the temporary levies of Alfred. The Englis]i, 
moreover were rendered inert by fear; they shrank from the 
sufferings and perils of a winter campaign in the face 
Atueincy. of such an enemy. Furthermore, men who had left 
their families for mouths to the care and pro- 
tection of old men and boys, could well plead that they were 
needed at home. Alfred, therefore, found it impossible to kec}) 
the field, and withdrew to the deep recesses of the forests of 
Somerset. Late in the winter, he established himself in a fort at 
Athelney, behind the marshes of the Parret, where he was pro- 
tected against any sudden advance of the Danish cavalry, but 
could watch their movements and offer a rendezvous for his people. 
Athelney was Alfred's "Valley Forge"; nor is it difficult for the 
imagination to picture the patient waiting and the heroic suffer- 
ing of the little band who still clung to their king, as they watched 
and waited for the spring to open the ways of the forest and enable 
the thanes of Somerset to join their standard again. ^ 

Soon after Easter, the fyrd of Somerset began to come 
and in, and Alfred was soon enabled to leave his hiding-place 

and take the field. On the eastern margin of Selwood, 
near Warminster, the fyrds of AViltshire and Hampshire also joined 
him, and with this force he advanced to meet the Danes at Chip- 
penham, whither they had removed from Exeter in Jan- 
Edington, nary. At Edington, eight miles from their camp, he 
took up a strong position, and waited for them to attack 
him. The battle was long and bloody, but the Danes were beaten 
and compelled to retire. Then, for fourteen days, Alfred besieged 

them at C*hippenham, and, finallv, by the grim logic of 
Chippenlmm. i i ^ +i ^ \ u- ^^ f 

famine, brought them to accept his otter ot peace. 

They must leave Wessex and settle down as peaceful landowners 

east of the old line of Watling Street, This land was already 

^ The old tale of Alfred and the burned cakes, belongs to this winter 
at Athelney. Its authority, however, is somewhat doubtful; and yet it is 
not unlikely that the incident or something like it, realh'' happened, in 
connection with some one of the many expeditions in which Alfred no 
doubt often went out in person to seek news of the enemy or find forage 
for his men. 



68 THE DANISH WAES [ Alfred 

earlier, gathered in separate communities, abont centers of popu- 
lation, each under its own jarl or king; but linked together in 
loose confederacies. South of Watliug Street, there was now one 
kingdom and one king. It is, moreover, significant, that, although 
Alfred continued through his reign to style himself simply "king 
of the West Saxons," in the Treaty of Wedmore his people are 
called "English" in distinction from the Danes. Possibly the 
application of the name to the West Saxons had been brought into 
general use by the Danes, who failed to distinguish between 
Angles and Saxons, and knew only the name of the people with 
whom they had first come in contact. '^ 

Alfred could now undertake the great work of his reign, the 
restoration and reorganization of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom. 

Little of the old order was left; ealdormen and kings 
demsMion ^^^ ^^^'^ swept away ; peace officers had disappeared, 

and the old rude courts for the protection of private 
rights, abandoned. Sees had been broken up; churches and 
monasteries destroyed, and bishops and abbots slaughtered or 
driven into exile. Cities lay in ruins; whole regions were waste, 
their populations destroyed or scattered by famine and the 
sword. With the destruction of the church, the sources of moral 
and intellectual life had also dried up. The very fibers of society 
were loosened. Yet, in spite of the general wreck, there still sur- 
vived the elements of the older organization, elements into which 
the character of the people had already breathed its life. With 
rare wisdom, Alfred seized upon these elements, and made them 
the foundation of the new England. 

Western Mercia was committed to Ethelred, who ruled it as a 
dependent principality, under the title of ealdorman. Alfred gave 

his own immediate attention to Wessex and the other 
Aifnn rnn-- kingdoms south of the Thames. Here, he sought to 
extends the weld the shattered fragments of these ancient states into 

shire system. c> 

a single compact kingdom. As far back as the days of 
Ine, Wessex appears to have enjoyed a somewhat thoroughly 
organized shire system. But Wessex was very small then, and her 

'See Gregory's letter to Augustine for early use of name "English" 
{Angli) as a general term. Gee and Hardy, Documents, etc., p. 9. 



ALPEED OKGANIZES THE KINGDOM 69 

handful of shires occupied only a small portion of the territory of 
Teutonic Britain. The rest of the country was governed by 
petty kings, or semi-independent ealdormen, who ruled each in his 
own seven-by-nine kingdom, holding his court in the open gate and 
knowing no intermediate jurisdiction between himself and the 
local court of the hundred. But now the old kingdoms were gone, 
with king and ealdormen, their hundred courts and their gate 
courts; yet the names and boundaries, and, most valuable of all, the 
habit and the traditions of local cooperation for local administration 
remained. Upon the lines of the old tribal kingdoms, therefore, 
Alfred organized and established the new shires; each a simple 
administrative district, under the jurisdiction of its own court, 
and presided over by its own steward, the scir-gerefa, whom wo 
know by the modern name of sheriff. By the side of the sheriff 
sat also the ealdorman and the bishop. It is not possible to dis- 
tinguish clearly the respective duties of these officers in the 
shire, but the sheriff was "the constituting officer" of the court. 
It is not likely that ealdorman and bishop were always present, 
but the sheriff, as the representative of the king, must be ; without 
him, there could be no shire court. It was his duty, also, to look 
after the interests of his master in the care of the crown lands within 
his shire, and the collection of fines and dues. It was the ealdor- 
man's duty to command the military lev'ies of the shire, — the fyrd. 
He was responsible for their condition; for the promptness with 
which they took the field. It was his, also, to lead them in bat- 
tle, to encourage them by his example, to hearten and cheer them 
by his fortitude under trial, by his courage in the face of peril. The 
sheriff was appointed by the king, but the ealdorman was elected 
by the witan, of which august body he was also a member, and to 
whose councils he contributed his wisdom. The bishop also had 
his interests in the shire; his people were amenable to its court; 
the innocent, the poor, and the friendless must be protected 
against injustice in the name of law; the various religious forms 
connected with the crude methods of trial must be superintended 
in the name of the church. 

The king himself might be present in the shire court; for this 
is to be born in mind, that the shire court was the lineal successor 



70 THE DANISH WARS [alfred 

of the old petty royal court. Hence, its character as a king's court 
was always maintained. The king andhis witan were theoretically 
present in the sheriff, the ealdorman, and the bishop. 

Neither shire nor shire court was the invention of Alfred; 
both had existed in Wessex for fully a hundred years before liis 

time. The name scir^ which was used at first, prob- 
Aifrcd-in ^^^J-> i'"* some such general way as the kindred word 
sftireSerft^ ^^(^f'^'^"' ^^ America, had been applied sometimes to 

the wards of a city, sometimes to the hundreds of a 
subkingdom. In Wessex, it had already come to indicate the 
greater divisions of the consolidated state. In Alfred's day, there- 
fore, neither the thing nor the name was new. What he did was 
to restore the ancient shires of Wessex, and reorganize alongside 
of them as coordinate shires, the ancient kingdoms of Kent, and 
Sussex, and Surrey, thus making them organic parts of one cen- 
tralized state; but, in so doing, he gave to the shi7'e a significance 
which had not belonged to it before. The expedient, moreover, 
was a happy one; for, while on the one hand it preserved tlie 
habit of local self-government, so essential to the development of 
free institutions, oii the other, it afforded an opj^ortunity for the 
development of a strong central government, so essential to the 
attainment of great statehood. 

The association of neighboring villages into minor, judicial dis- 
tricts, known later in England as hundreds, was, as we have seen, 

like the shires, not a new thing. These also Alfred 

Alfred and . . ,i, j_i j 

the smtem of reorganized and harmonizea, and greatly strengthened 
and extended as the foundation of the shire system. 
To give weight and dignity to the decisions of the hundred* court, 
the great landowners of the district who possessed five hides of 
land or more, the thanes, were required to be present and to 
assist the court in rendering just decisions. They themselves, 
however, were exempt from the jurisdiction of the local court, and 
held in their own halls a coordinate court for their people. In all 
cases, the king held the presiding judges responsible for the 
decisions of their respective courts, nor did he hesitate to inter- 
fere or punish the judge who was neglectful of his duty or gave 
other evidence of his unfitness. Even the ealdorman was not 



ALFRED AND THE LAWS 71 

above the king's displeasure, and might be removed for connivance 
at crime or injustice. The poor, the remnant of the old free 
ceorls, the friendless peasantry upon whom the heavy hand of the 
great magnates was apt to rest with unsparing severity, were the 
special objects of the king's solicitude; "for the poor had no 
friend save the king." 

Side by side with a better civil organization, Alfred established 
also a better military organization. By old Teutonic law, the 

great body of freemen were held to military duty, and 
arfdtne might be called into the field in the presence of common 

mvajdzation <53,nger. But the long campaigning of the earlier years 

of Alfred's reign, and the need of keeping the nation 
constantly under arms, had been a severe strain upon the older 
system, and it had more than once failed in an hour of greatest 
peril, as in the winter of 877. Alfred sought to remedy this 
weakness of the fyrd, by introducing a system of reliefs. Only a 
third of the people were to be called into active service in the field 
at any one time; another third were to do garrison duty; while 
the remaining third tilled the fields and cared for the families of 
those who were facing the enemy. The period of service, more- 
over, was definitely fixed, and the men of each division knew just 
when they were to be relieved. 

With the same wise policy of adapting old institutions to the 
new needs of the nation, Alfred addressed himself to a reform of 

existing laws. From the codes of Ethel bert, Ine, and 
tiiehuvT^'^ Offa, supplemented by provisions taken from the 

ancient Levitical Law, he compiled a new code for the 
common kingdom. The only originality which he claimed for 
himself was that of selection: "I gathered these laws together 
and commanded many of those to be written which our fore- 
fathers held, those which to me seemed good ; and many of those 
which to me seemed not good, I rejected." ^ In these laws, how- 
ever, there is a marked advance in this : whereas the general prin- 
ciple of the commutation of crime for money is still recognized, 
we have now a distinct law against treason, for which the death 
penalty is assigned. "If any one plot against the king's life, of 

1 Preamble to Alfred's Laws. Stubbs, S. C, p. 63. 



72 THE DANISH WARS [alfbed 

himself, or by harboring of exiles, or of his men, let him be liable 
in his life and in all that he has." The king, however, is not the 
only member of the community whose life is protected by the 
death penalty. "He who plots against his lord's life, let him be 
liable in his life to him, and in all that he has." In these laws 
we see the strength with which the importance of the kingly 
authority is taking hold of the popular mind; we also see the 
growing influence of the great landowning aristocracy. Com- 
pared with one of these great lords of the soil, the life of the 
landless freeman was of little importance. 

No statesman ever appreciated more than Alfred the value of 
education in elevating a people, or in creating a true national 

spirit. His own education had been neglected in his 
fducca^n^ early years ; for wbat reason is not known. He had 

been left to gather what he could in a desultory way ; 
at twelve he had not yet learned his letters ; nor in his later years 
was he ever able to atone for the lack of early training, always to 
him a source of deep regret. Yet possibly this early neglect was 
not without its compensations. For during these years when 
Latin, the literary language of the ninth century, was to him a 
sealed tongue, his fresh young mind must have drunk deep and 
long from the homely fountains of his own English, the language 
which was yet virtually without a literature, and learned to value 
the priceless traditions of a past which was rapidly fading. It is 
not likely that ho knew much of Bede in those days, for Bede 
had written in Latin; but he must have heard the gleemen sing 
their half -pagan songs in his father's hall ; he must have listened 
to tales of brave deeds of old, of "sword play," and "shield wall," 
and "arrow flight," until the generous heart of the lad had 
thrilled with patriotic emotion. Nor, in after years, when his turn 
came to take up the burdens of a king, could he forget these 
lessons, or fail to appreciate the value of such traditions in in- 
spiring the English with pride in their past, or confidence in their 
future. Thus Alfred, first among English kings, grasped the 
importance of national history as an instrument of education, and 
sought to leave to the people, in a language which the simplest of 
them could understand, a record of their kings and of their own 



THE NINTH CENTURY RENAISSANCE 73 

achievements. This record, compiled under Alfred's direction, 
partly from curreiit traditions and partly from the Ecclesiastical 
History of Bede, was tlie beginning of the famous Ghron- 
Saxon icle, which was destined to be continued for three hun- 

dred years, forming a sort of semi - official national 
diary of the greatest value in recovering the later history of 
Old English kings. For the benefit of his unlearned country- 
men also Alfred caused to be put in an English dress such works, 
standard in his day, as Bede's history and the general history of 
the world of Orosius. The king's interest in literature, however, 
was by no means confined to history. He caused translations to 
be made of standard philosophical and theological works as well, 
of which the most important were the Consolations of Pliilosopliy 
of the unfortunate Boethius, and the Pastoral Care of Pope 
Gregory I. He also made a collection of the ancient epic songs of 
the English. But of these, with the exception of the epic of 

Beowulf^ only a few fragments have survived. In Beo- 
Beoivulf. 7^ , 1 . ■, T • 

zoulf, however, we have a priceless treasure, it is not 

only the earliest of English poems, antedating the era of migra- 
tion;^ it is also a striking picture of life and manners, far more 
than the dry annals of the Chronicle, revealing the temper of the 
ancient English folk.^ 

The compilation of the Chronicle, the translation of standard 

works, and the collection of English war songs, formed only a 

part of Alfred's plans for furthering the education of 

Tlie ninth ' 

century his people. Like Charles the Great, he ransacked his 

fGYlOAsSCtJlCC' 

dominions for men who were apt to teach. From 
Mercia, he drew out Plegmund, who in 890 became archbishop 
of Canterbury, From Wales, he brought the man who was after- 
ward to become his biographer, the learned Asser. Even foreign 
countries also were invited to contribute of their wealth to enrich 
his schools. Saxony gave him John the "Old Saxon" and St. 
Bertin gave him Grimbald. Under the inspiration of such men, 
there began a genuine renaissance. The long struggle with the 

^ Its present form is probably the work of a Christian monk of the 
eighth century. 

2 See Green, H. E. P., I., pp. 17-20. 



74 THE DANISH WARS [alfrkd 

Danes had dealt severely with the English kingdoms; the old 
schools had been destroyed, their teachers and pupils scattered, and 
the people had lapsed into barbaric ignorance. When Alfred 
began his reign it was said that there was not a man in Wessex 
who could read understaudingly. When Alfred closed his reign, 
English prose had been born, and the English mind had received 
an inspiration which it was not to lose, until it emerged into the 
full day of the modern era. 

The same order which Alfred introduced into the administra- 
tion pf his kingdom, he introduced also into his own private life. 
Thevahicof ^^^ ^^^^^ ^^^ clock to warn him of the flight of the hours; 
miiwdl-ai ^-*"^' ^^ burning a series of tapers, he contrived to divide 
^'^*-'- his day with some accuracy. When he noticed that the 

draughts caused his candles to burn unevenly at times, he pro- 
tected them with a lantern made with sides of horn. The well- 
ordered household, the value put upon education, the sobriety and 
patient industry of the king, and the quiet seriousness with which 
he took the duties of his high oflQce, created an influence which 
affected all who came in contact with him, and from the court ex- 
tended outward and downward to the people. 

While Alfred was thus laying broad foundations for tlie future 
greatness of his people, the Danes of Britain were quietly set- 
The Danes ^ling dowu to a peaceful life, learning much from the 
^Wreli'si tcr ^"glish who dwelt among them, and forgetting much 
reujn. ^f their old hostility. Occasionally a new band from 

the continent harried Alfred's coasts. But Alfred, in reorganiz- 
ing the land fyrd, had not forgotten the ship fyrd. In the year 
882 his seamen sank thirteen Danish ships at the mouth of the 
Stour, one of the earliest recorded achievements of the English 
navy. It is to be noted, however, that the sea had become a 
strange element to the English ; the children had forgotten the 
ways of their fathers, and Alfred could man his ships only by 
enlisting foreigners. It is to be noted, also, that the long 
exemption of Britain from such attacks was due quite as much to 
the extreme feebleness of the Erankish Empire during this period 
and the richer booty promised by the monasteries and cities of the 
south, as to the prestige of Alfred. Upon the first manifestation 



891-895J RENEWAL OF DANISH INROADS 75 

of returning vigor in the Frankish defense, the Danes once more 
began to appear on the English coast. From 891 to 895, Alfred's 
hands were full. One horde under Bjorn Jaernsides descended on 
the southern coast of Kent, and creeping up into the Limen, estab- 
lished themselves at Appledore. After laying waste the surround- 
ing shires of Kent, Sussex, and Surrey, they were at last beaten 
by Alfred's son Edward at Farnham in 893, and driven down the 
Thames where they found shelter among the swamps of Thorny 
Island, the present Westminster. Then Ethelred, Alfred's son- 
in-law, the ealdorman of Mercia, fell upon them from, the Mercian 
side, and forced them to make terms and retire to Mersea on the 
coast of Essex. Alfred himself, in the meanwhile, was occupied 
with another horde under the famous Hasting, who had entered 
the Thames and taken up their station at Milton, whence they 
ravaged western Kent and threatened London. Alfred succeeded 
in driving them from Kent, only to see them settle again on the 
other side of the Thames at Benfleet still nearer London. Before 
he could come at them again he was recalled to the west to save 
Devonshire and Exeter from a horde of Northumbrian Danes. In 
the meanwhile, the Danes of East Anglia and Essex had been 
aroused by the rout of war which had entered their borders, and 
many of them flocked to the banners of Hasting, so that he was 
emboldened to dash by London and start "on a wild raid up the 
valley of the Thames." The whole west country, however, rose 
before him, and by the time he reached the Severn, he found 

himself confronted by the ealdorman, Ethelred, with 
Butmigton, ^he fyrds of the Mercians, the Sumorsaetas, and the 

Wilsaetas. Even the Nortii Welsh sent their contingents 
to help against the common foe. At Buttington, Hasting was 
brought to bay, and the English prepared to starve him to terms, 
quite after the manner of Edington and Chippenham. But when 
his horses had been eaten, apparently not such an extreme hardship 
for the Danes, Hasting attempted to cut his way through the 
beleaguering ranks. A great battle was fought, and many of 
Alfred's thanes fell, but Hasting got away to Chester, where he 
wintered among the ruins of the old Eoman city. Hither Ethelred 
followed him and kept him closely beleaguered until the spring of 



76 THE DANISH WARS [alfred 

895, when Hasting agaia escaped, and finally, after an attempt 
upon North Wales, retired into Northumbria. Benfleet, in the 
meantime, had also been cleared of the Danes, whom Hasting had 
left behind, but Mersea still continued to be the Danish base on 
the East Saxon coast. Hither Hasting made his way from North- 
umbria with the remnant of his army, and, joining his fleet again, 
brought his ships by way of the Thames up into the Lea, and estab- 
lished himself within twenty miles of London. He was, strictly, 
still upon Danish territory, but Alfred could not allow this new 
camp to remain just over his borders to menace the peace of Mercia. 

The Londoners began the siege in the summer and in 
895. . ^ '^ 

harvest time Alfred arrived and took charge of the 

operations. He threw a dam across the river below the camp, 
and by cutting off the escape of the Danes to the sea forced the 
horde to disperse, but could not prevent individual bands from slip- 
ping away into Essex and East Anglia. One company succeeded 
in breaking into Mercia, and repeating the career of Hasting of 
the year before, reached the Welsh border, and wintered near 
Bridgenorth. The next summer they retired into Northumbria. 
In the summer of 896 there were "desultory landings" on the 
southern coast, but the danger was passed. The losses of the four 

years had been very severe. A great number of Alfred's 
'jLUred^^"^ people had fallen; among them two bishops, three eal- 

doruien, and many of the minor thanes. Vast areas of 
country had also been laid waste. But Alfred's system had suc- 
cessfully stood the strain, and Englishmen had learned the value 
of an efficient government, loyally sustained. 

Five years later, Alfred, the greatest of early English kings, 
laid down the burdens which he had carried so well. He had 

reigned twenty-nine years and six months. He was 

Death and 

character of preeminently the right man in the right place. He 
imparted his own energy and courage to the English 
people in the most critical period of the national history. But he 
did more than this. He founded the England which we know. 
By an unerring instinct, the traditions of a thousand years trace 
back to him the beginnings of almost all that is great and good in 
English life and character. He has been called "the model man of 



CHARACTER OF ALFRED 77 

the English race." ^ He was "the noblest, as he was the most 
complete embodiment of all that is great, all that is lovable, in the 
English temper. He combined, as no other man has ever combined, 
its practical energy, its patient and enduring force, its profound 
sense of duty, the reserve and self-control, that steadies in it a 
wide outlook and a restless daring, its temperance and fairness, its 
frank geniality, its sensitiveness to affection, its poetic tenderness, 
its deep and passionate religion." '^ Like all great men, Alfred 
was many-sided. Among the scholars who gathered about him, 
he was one of the first, leading them in the arduous work of trans- 
lation. "The singers of the court found in him a brother singer." 
He could plan buildings with his craftsmen; he could superintend 
the workmen; he could instruct even his "falconers and dogkeep- 
ers." Deeply religious, frail in health, and seldom free from pain, 
he was no ascetic, but a thoroughgoing man of affairs, laborious, 
methodical, and careful of details. He was a leader whom men 
trusted with implicit confidence, because they felt that he was 
directed and controlled by sterling good sense, and was able to 
"bring things to pass"; he is "one of the most pleasing, and per- 
haps the most perfect, character in history";^ the king who, "as 
no other man on record, has so thoroughly united all the virtues, 
both of the ruler and of the private man." * 

^ Goldwin Smith, The United Kingdom, I, p. 12. 

2 Green, H. E. P., I, 75. 

3 Ramsay, I, 247. 

* Freeman, N. C, I, 51. 



CHAPTER V 

THE EECONQUEST OF THE DANELAGH AND THE EXPANSION OE 

THE ENGLISH KINGDOM UNDER THE GREAT KINGS OF 

THE HOUSE OF ALFRED 

Edward, distinguished by later historians as "the Elder," suc- 
ceeded to the crown by Alfred's death. His coronation, however, 

did not take place until the following spring. The 
Edward delay, it is thought, was due to an attempt of his cousin 

Ethelwold, the son of Ethelred, the brother of Alfred, 
to regain his father's crown. But the people could not so soon 
forget the services of Alfred, and nobly responded to the call of 
his son to defend the crown against his rival. Edward, moreover, 
had already been elected by the witan during his father's lifetime, 
and this choice more than offset in the public mind any claim 
which Ethelwold might advance, based upon the right of primogeni- 
ture. Before the determined front of the nation, Ethelwold's 
courage forsook him, and he fled to Northumbria, to return after 
two years at the head of a Danish army. But a shrewd counter 
raid of the king into the enemy's country compelled the Danes to 
turn home again, and with the death of Ethelwold which shortly 
followed, peace was once more restored, and all resistance to the 
succession of Edward ceased. 

Edward could now feel himself free to continue the great work 
which his father had begun. Eecent events had taught him the 

insecurity of peace, as long as the Danes retained their 
of Edward independence. The Danelagh must be conquered and 

fOT" UUCW 

made a part of the West Saxon kingdom. But Edward 
had been trained in too good a school to rush blindly into a strug- 
gle for which he had not first prepared himself and his people. To 
this end in the year 907, by the restoration of Chester which had 

78 



907-914] RECONQUEST OE DANELAGH BEGUN 79 

remained in ruins since the time of Ethelfrid the Devastator, he 
began a series of fortifications which extended along his whole bor- 
der and took ten years to complete. For the most part these for- 
tifications consisted of a combination of the earthen rampart and 
mound of the Danes and the old English hurg or surrounding 
fence of palisades, faced by the inevitable ditch. Sometimes, 
however, an ancient Roman camp was restored. If stone walls 
were used in fortifying cities, it was only in rare cases, for the era 
of stone fortresses had not yet come. The Danes had taught the 
English the value of such works; for it was neither superior 
generalship nor superior courage which had made the Danes 
formerly so difficult to dislodge when once they had established 
themselves, but their fortified camps. On the other hand, the 
English heretofore had had no fortified towns, nor known aught 
of the science of fortification. When once beaten in the field, the 
whole country lay at the mercy of the enemy. 

In 912 Ethelred, the ealdurman of Mercia, died. It was 

Alfred's wish apparently that Mercia should be the portion of his 

daughter, Ethelfleda, "the Lady of the Mercians." 

Etheineda, _, ^ ° ' , ■ ' ^ -^ . , 

The Lady of Edward, therefore, reiused to appoint another ealdor- 
tlieMercians. ti»i t . . . \ ^r • • 

man, and left the administration of Mercia in the hands 

of his widowed sister; but he detached all the lower Thames basin, 
including Oxford and London, and probably on account of its 
importance, added it to Wessex. Ethelfleda, however, possessed 
all the genius of her house for war and administration, and upper 
Mercia suffered nothing in her hands. 

The Danes were not unmindful of the intent of Edward's fort- 
building, and from the restoration of Chester, each new essay on 

the part of the English was followed by a raid of Danes 
invasion of ^^^^^ English territory. Edward, however, steadily 
me Danelagh, pushed forward the fortification of the border, and in 

914 the work was far enough along for him to under- 
take the formal invasion of Essex. The method of advance which 
Edward adopted at this time was generally followed in the subse- 
quent wars, and goes far to explain the unvarying success of 
his operations, and the steadiness with which the English line was 
pushed out, until in ten years it reached the Humber. He first 



80 



RECONQUEST OF DAJSTELAGH [ekwakd the Elder 



led a large force into the enemy's country and established a power- 
ful camp ; then under cover of the camp he built a permanent for- 
tress and garrisoned it with his own people. Thus while he lay 
encamped at Maldon in 914, he erected a fort at Witham, which 
made him master of all southern Essex, and thrust the Danes 

back upon the 
Colne. 

Yet the 
task was by 
no means as 
simple as the 
ease with 
which these 
first successes 
were wo n 
might seem 
to imply. The 
Danes were 
weak, because 
they had nev- 
er been organ- 
ized into a 
compact king- 
dom, but it 
was possible 
for them, at 
any time, to 
unite their 
forces and 
offer a serious 
resistance. Moreover, there was always a chance of interference 
on the part of the powerful bands of their kinsmen who were 
still roaming at large upon the continent. This liappened soon 
after the erection of Witham, when some fragments of the 
hordes which had recently settled with Eolf on the lower Seine, 
the later Normandy, descended upon the Bristol coast. But 
Edward was not to be deterred from his greater work, and, when 




915-921] PERMANENT UNION OF MERCIA AND WESSEX 81 

he had driven the newcomers off to Ireland, returned again to his 
systematic encroachment on the Danelagh, cautiously seizing and 
fortifying station after station, and formally annexing the sur- 
rounding country to Mercia or Wessex. In the year 915 he seized 
advanced stations on the Ouse. The next year he fortified Bed- 
ford and in 917 he took permanent possession of Maldon. The 
year 918 saw a still more marked advance in middle England. 
The Danes of Northampton, Leicester, and Huntingdon combined 
to sweep the English back from the line of Watling Street. They 
built a counter work at Tempsford, and attacked Edward's 
recently erected forts at Towcester and Bedford. Edward replied 
by a vigorous advance along his whole line. He himself took 
Tempsford; while the Lady of the Mercians attacked Derby 
and carried it by storm. Other operations also were undertaken 
by the king in Essex, in which Colchester was taken, Huntingdon 
occupied, and a fort erected at Passenham. When the year 918 
ended, Cambridge had submitted, and the English line had been 
pushed to the Welland. 

The next year Ethelfleda took possession of Leicester and the 
great part of the neighboring country submitted without a strug- 
gle. This was her last success. She died at Tamworth 
of^Mercda ^^ midsummer after a brilliant reign of eight years. 
and Wassex, Ethelfleda stands alone among the women of the old 
English era. Many women have become great rulers, but 
few have combined with rare administrative ability, equal talent 
in marshalling armies and leading men in battle. Ethelfleda left a 
daughter, but inasmuch as she was a mere child, Edward assumed 
the administration of Mercian affairs himself. Thus the separate 
government of Mercia came to an end. 

Edward could now see his goal. The submission of the Five 

Boroughs and the Fen country was followed by the submission of 

East Anglia. The year after Ethelfleda's death the 

Completion -n t i 

of Edward's English outposts were pushed across the Mersey and 
established at Manchester, and the year following, 931, 
Edward fortified Bakewell in the Peakland. The whole south 
Humber country was now in his hands, and English colonists were 
beginning to pour into the conquered territories. Then followed 



82 RECONQUEST OP DANELAGH [edwaed the Eldee 

a noteworthy event, which shows how the fame of Edward had gone 
before him and overawed tlie whole north ; for here at Bakewell 
came Welsh and Scots, Danes and English, to accept Edward's 
authority and take him to "father and lord. "^ Thus ended the 
work of conquest for that generation. • The northern states, 
crippled by dissension and awed by the irresistible advance of the 
English lines, had no desire to press the question of supremacy 
farther. Edward had secured the Humber as the northern border 
of his actual kingdom; he had also secured the recognition of his 
overlordship in the regions north of the Humber. He rested con- 
tent; his work was done. 

Edward survived his triumph at Bakewell barely four years. 

His reign is marked by the solidity of its successes, due as much to 

the sterling worth of the man as to his farsighted wis- 

Death of ^ ^^ *= ^ , . , , . • i , , 

Edward, dom. 'He and his noble sister are m themselves the 

925- 

best testimonies of the greatness and goodness of 
Alfred. Only a good home, where all that is lovable and true and 
strong in child character is strengthened and encouraged, could 
produce such children. Eor Alfred, with true insight, had realized 
how much the strength or weakness of his children might mean 
to his people, and had taken as much pains in their education and 
training as in any of the many public institutions which he 
founded. In some respects possibly, Edward even surpassed 
Alfred. He is undoubtedly the greatest military leader of the old 
English period; his unvarying success is as remarkable as the sub- 
stantial nature of his conquests. He comprehended fully the spirit 
of his father's great work of reorganization, and made his con- 
quests the means of strengthening and extending it, forming of the 
England which he had won a compact national state. 

Edward had all his father's love of justice, and realized fully 
the importance of "just dooms" to a contented and happy people. 

He constrained his witan to support him in the main- 
Edumri teuancc of peace, and made them responsible for the 

denial or delay of justice. Each gerefa was required to 

' For the question of the submission of Constantine, King of Scots, in 
921, see Freeman, N. C, I, 57, 118, 565; and also Wyckoff, Feudal Relations 
of the Croivns of England and Scotland, pp. 1-31. 



935] DACKE 83 

hold his court "always once in four weeks," plainly the hundred 
court, and "every suit was to have an end, and a term in which it 
must be brought forward. " The relations of English and Danes 
were carefully regulated by a graded wergeld. A system was also 
established by which legal bargains could be made only within a 
walled town and in the presence of the reeve. The law was 
afterward softened somewhat by Athelstan, but the principle 
which required public recognition of commercial transactions 
must have been very useful among a semi-barbarous people, 
and often saved them from the occasion of litigation. In Edward's 
laws, also, we have the first notice of the ordeal, not a new 
method of trial by any means, but from this time conspicuous 
among the strange old laws of the Anglo-Saxons, curious 
mingling of Christianity and barbarism. All in all, Eng- 
lish society had not advanced far, when peace breaking and 
perjury, robbery and murder, were still incidents of daily life 
against which king and witan waged a long and weary, but not 
hopeless warfare. 

When Edward died, his eldest son, Athelstan, was about thirty 
years of age. In his infancy Alfred had acknowledged him as his 

successor, and had "invested him with the insignia of a 
^5-9^*""' warrior and an etheling; namely, a purple mantle, a 

jeweled belt, and the national Saxon sword in a golden 
scabbard." For the moment it seemed that Athelstau's succes- 
sion also would be disputed in the interests of an heir of Ethelred, 
and that Mercia, which had declared for Athelstan, would again be 
separated from Wessex. But the proposal of the West Saxon witan 
to set up a separate king came to nothing, and Athelstan the third 
in line of the great West Saxon kings, took up the work of father 
and grandfather. 

The first year of the reign was marked by an important meeting 
of northern lords at Dacre, where the Welsh kings, Howel Dha 

of Dyfed and Owen of Gwent, Constantino king of 
^Dacnf^ Scots, and Eldred of Bamborough, came to acknowledge 

the lordship of the new king. That Athelstan took the 
homage seriously, as a recognition of his supremacy over the north, 
is shown by the style which he now assumes. He is no longer like 



84 RECONQUEST OF DANELAGH [ 



Athklstam 



Alfred, "King of the West Saxons," or like his father, "King 
of the Anglo-Saxons"; he is "Monarch of all Britain." 

The homage of Dacre, however, does not seem to have proved a 

very secure basis for a lasting peace. The attempt of Athelstan to 

seize York, and possibly Bernicia, and incorporate them 

Brunan- in his southern kingdom, led to complications with the 

buvJl 937» 

king of Scots, and the formation of a great northern 
coalition. A raid of Athelstan upon the east coast of Scotland in 
934 led to a counter raid into England in 937. With a vast 
horde of Scots, Picts, Welsh, and Danes, Constantiue entered the 
Humber, and, leaving his ships, marched into Lincolnshire. 
Athelstan and his brother Edmund met him on the field of 
Brunanburh, All day long the battle raged. All day long the 
English continued to hurl themselves upon the earthworks and 
palisades behind which the northerns had taken their stand. 

Here gat King Aethelstan, 
And eke his brother 
Eadmund Aetheling 
Life-long glory 
At sword's edge, 
Round Brunanburh; 
Board-wall they cleft 
War-lindens hewed, 
Sithen sun up 
At morning-tide, 
God's noble candle, 
Glid o'er the lands. 
Till the bright being 
Sank to his settle.^ 

Such terrible war-work cost the English dear; but the north- 
ern horde Avas beaten, and Constantiue with the wreck of his 
army was glad to retire to his ships leaving behind him upon the 
earthworks of Brunanburh five "young kings," among them his. 
own son. 

' For the site of Brunanburh see Ramsay, I, p. 285. For the famous 
war song, see Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, with translation by Thorpe in "Rolls 
Series." a. d. 937. 



EESULTS OP ATHELSTAN'S REIGN 85 

From Briinanburli Athelstan returned home to rule iii 
peace, the sole king of the English from the Channel to the Tyne, 

and the undisputed overlord of Britain. The degree of 
Atheistan's authority which he exercised over Scot and Cumbrian 

will probably always remain a question of dispute among 
scholars ; the Welsh recognized his overlordship to the extent of a 
substantial tribute; their kings also appeared among the witan as 
regular attendants at the English court. 

The reputation of Athelstan soon passed beyond the borders of 
his island kingdom. Harold of Norway sent his son Hakon to be 

educated at his court. Henry the Fowler sought 
ancesof Athelstan's sister, the gentle Edith, as a wife for his 

Athelstan. . o-i, «, n 

son Otto, then a prince oi eighteen, afterward to 
become emperor and second founder of the Holy Eoman Empire. 
Still another sister was married to Hugh the Great, Count of 
Paris and Duke of France, whose son was the famous Hugh 
Capet, ^ founder of the modern French monarchy. A third sister, 
Edgiva, had been married in Edward's lifetime to Charles the 
Simple, the only surviving representative of the old Carlovingian 
dynasty. Her son was the unfortunate Louis D'Outre-Mer, who 
spent fourteen years of enforced exile at the English court, and 
succeeded at last to his father's throne only by the influence of 
his powerful uncles. 

Athelstan's death came suddenly, just at the moment when he 

was beginning to reap the full results of the wisdom of father and 

grandfather. He had reigned for fifteen years, and both 

Death of ^ ,. ^ ,, ^ . ^, ., , "^^ i -, . 

Athelstan, on the field and in the council chamber had given 

940. . 

Results of hUi ample proof of the possession of all the abilities of his 
house. Compared with the glories of Brunanburh or 
the exaltation of Dacre, the utmost achievements of Alfred or 
Edward appear almost trifling. And yet, these brilliant triumphs 
of Athelstan bore no such solid results as the faithful organizing 
of Alfred, or the patient building of Edward, and much of his 
work had to be done over again. 

^ Hugh Capet was the son of a second wife, Hedvvig, a sister of Otto, 
the Great. 



86 EECOlsrQUEST OF DAKELAGH [edmund 

Upon the death of Athelstan, his brother Edmund passed at 
once to the throne. Edmund was a mere lad of eighteen. He had 

fought by his royal brother's side at Brunanburh ; but 
Edmund, \^q }jad had no experience in administration, and the 

northern earls^ looked upon his election as an experi- 
ment. They withheld their allegiance, and invited the Danish 
king, Olaf of Dublin, to come over and assume the royal authority 
at York. The Mercian Danes also were restless and ready to join 
with the Northumbrians. Edmund promptly took the field. Olaf 
marched into the south Humber country and advanced as far as 
Northampton. Here his advance was checked, and he was com- 
pelled to fall back, first upon Tamworth, and then toward Chester. 
Edmund followed hard upon the track of Olaf, and a pitched bat- 
tle appeared inevitable, when the two Archbishops, Odo of Canter- 
bury and Wulfstan of York, interfered and a peace was patched 
up, which, strange to say, virtually ceded not only what Athelstan 
had won, but Edward's conquests as well. The English hold 
upon the old Danelagh, however, was too strong to be renounced 
in a day, and, shortly after the disgraceful peace of Chester, 
Edmund appears once more in full possession of the Five Bor- 
oughs; and by 945 Olaf had been driven out of .the northern 
counties as well, and all Northumbria was again under Edmund's 
authority. The same year also saw Edmund in Cumberland, 
harrying the countryside, and compelling its king, Donald, to 
renew the homage which he had given to Athelstan.^ 

The next year the young king, whose reign had opened so 
auspiciously, came to an untimely -end in a way that well illus- 
trates the wild turbulence of the time. The king was keeping the 
Feast of St. Augustine at Pucklechurch in Gloucestershire, when 
a notorious freebooter, Leofa, who had been recently banished by 

^ Earl is an English spelling of the Danish jarZ, e before a in Anglo- 
Saxon having the sound of the Danish j. After the Danish wars Earl is 
generally substituted for ealdorman. 

^ "The allegation of a cession of Cumbria or Strathclyde to Scotland 
must be dismissed as an idle boast of our chroniclers, but one quite in 
accordance with the turgid pretensions of the royal charters of the 
period." — Ramsay, I, p. 297. 



945-955] EDEED 87 

the king's order, entered the hall and insisted upon taking his 
seat at the king's board. The king, indignant at the insult, 
ordered his steward to expel the man. The ruffian resisted, and 
the king himself joined in the struggle. A knife flashed, and 
Edmund sank to the floor. The thanes dispatched the outlaw; 
but the king was dead. 

Edmund's eldest son, Edwy, was still a child; and the witan, 
as at the death of Ethelred, turned again from the direct line to 

elect a younger brother of the late king, in this case 
f^-9^5 Edred. Edred was four years older than Edmund when 

Edmund assumed tlie crown, but since childhood 
Edred had been a confirmed invalid. He was surrounded, how- 
ever, by the veteran counselors of his brothers and his father, and 
during his reign of nine years the administration revealed no fall- 
ing off in energy or efficiency. There was the usual hesitation of 
the northern people in accepting the new king, but the prompt 
action of the Welsh and the English, and the ready energy of the 
king's ministers, not only forestalled the growth of any widely- 
extended revolt, but enabled Edred to add Northumbria per- 
manently to England. The Northumbrians themselves, more- 
over, were weary of Danish rule, and apparently conspired 
with the English to expel the last representatives of the race of 
Healfdene and Ivar the Boneless. Edred, however, did not 
organize the newly acquired territory as a part of the English king- 
dom of the south, but united Deira and Bernicia into one vast 
ealdormanry, or earldom, which he bestowed upon Osulf, the "High 
Reeve of Bamborough," who had recently been of great service in 
expelling the Danish kings. 

Edred did not long survive the establishment of an English 
ealdorman over Northumbria. His name hardly belongs to the list 

of great kings of the House of Alfred: yet he was 
Chavcicter o o ^ j 

ofEdred's not lacking in spirit, neither was he a man to be trifled 

reign. , 

His death, with. The arrest and imprisonment of the treacherous 

955, ^-^^ 

Wulfstan, Archbishop of York, had quite the ring of 
the old metal. The reign, moreover, on the whole was suc- 
cessful, nor did the prestige of the royal house suffer. Yet the poor 
young king, weighted with a sickly body, with scarcely blood 



88 EECONQUEST OF DANELAGH [edbbd 

enough in his veins to keep them open, must have had a weary 
struggle; after nine years he gave up the contest, and was laid 
by the side of his brother Edmund at Glastonbury. 

The recovery of the Danelagh was now completed. The ques- 
tion of supremacy was permanently settled, not only between Danes 
Teufnnic ^^^ English, but also between North Britain and South 
Britain Britain. Henceforth, southern Britain was to direct 

England. i}^q "destiuios of the island," give it its royal family, 
and rule it from its southern capital. But more important still, 
Teutonic Britain had becom.e England; in the furnace fire of for- 
eign war, local differences and tribal antagonisms had disappeared, 
and the once rival tribes had been fused into one people. The 
tribal king of the West Saxons had become the national king of the 
English. 

In the presence of such changes it was not possible for the old 
simple political and social constitution to remain as it had been in 
the past. The erasure of ancient tribal lines and the 
eTk-u^^ concentration of all royal authority in the family of 
o'^^'anization ^^sscx, Vastly increasing the personal authority and 
prestige of the king, were sufficient to change the pro- 
portions of the old constitution. But other changes fully as impor- 
tant, and even more radical, had extended through the entire social 
structui'e. The old free ceorls had sunk into a condition of semi- 
servitude. The laws of the time, designed no doubt to protect 
society against the vagrant, compelled every man to put himself 
under the protection of some lord, who thus became a sort of per- 
petual bail, responsible for the conduct of his man, and in case of 
crime bound to produce him in court or make good the loss which 
his ill-doing had caused the community. A man of good character 
would find little difficulty in securing a lord, but the man who had 
once lost his reputation was in a sad plight, for the lordless man 
had no standing before the law. The principle was feudal, and 
indicates, all too plainly, that English society was changing rapidly 
from a community of independent freemen to an oligarchy of rich 
landowners, where wealth was the only badge of independence. It 
indicates, moreover, that the poor freeman could no longer be trusted ; 
the loss of personal independence, as always, had been attended 



THE GILDS 89 

by a corresponding loss of self-respect and sense of responsibility. 
Freemen had become servile in nature, and, therefore, servile in 
condition. 

With the decline of the free poor, there is also a marked advance 
in the severity of the laws in dealing with petty offenders, who 

naturally came from this class, or the scarcely lower 
regulations ^^^^^ ^^^° represented the old villainage. No thief of 

twelve years of age or over who stole to the amount of 

twelve pence was to be spared. He was to be slain, if found guilty, 

and all that he had was to be taken. The manifest thief was to 

be pursued by hue and cry, and the first man who felled him to the 

earth was to receive a fee of twelve pence. The population 

also were invited to enroll themselves into gilds, each 
The Gild. . 

under its own head or ealder. Ten gilds, again, were 

to be associated together into a larger association known as the 

hundred} The gild was to serve as a sort of home protection 

association, designed to insure its members against loss by theft. 

Their duty was to lead the hue and cry against the thief, and see 

that the stolen property or its value was restored to the owner. 

The value of the stolen property was first to be taken from the 

goods of the thief; what was left was then divided into two parts, 

one of which was given to the wife of the thief, if she had had no part 

in the crime; the second part was divided equally between the king 

and the gild brethren. The gild, in dealing with the thief, was 

not required to appeal to legal authority, but might proceed at once 

to extreme measures. In other words "lynch law" was legalized, 

and its violence Justified The sheriff was to be called upon only 

when the offender was too strong for the gilds to deal with, or 

when he sought refuge in another shire. Then the pursuit of the 

criminal was handed over to the neighboring sheriff, who was 

bound either to produce the thief or hunt him out of his shire. 

This particular scheme originated first among the bishops and 

reeves of London, but it seems to have been added as a supplement 

to the public acts of Athelstan's reign, and was to be applied to 

the whole kingdom. The king urges its adoption upon his bishops, 

^ Not to be confused with the territorial institution of that name. 



90 RECONQUEST OE DANELAGH [edbed 

ealdormen, and sheriffs, that the people may be relieved of the 

annoyance of thieving. 

In the laws of Athelstan, the shire court and the whole system 

of procedure emerges with more and more distinctness from the 

obscurity of the earlier period. General attendance 
Method of 
trial. upon the shire court was enforced by fines. The sheriff 

TJl6 OTCl/CCil 

was also more definitely recognized as the king's repre- 
sentative officer. An accused man,- if not taken in the act, was 
allowed to clear himself by the oath of his lord or his friends. Fail- 
ing of this, he was put to his trial, which was simply an appeal to God 
to work a miracle in his behalf and save him from punishment, if he 
were innocent; another instance which shows how overwhelmingly 
the laws favored the property holder. The accuser might select 
the kind of test to be applied, but the law prescribed in each case 
whether the ordeal should be single or double or triple. "In the 
case of the ordeal by hot iron, a fire was kindled in the church, and 
a bar of iron weighing one, tvv^o, or three pounds^ placed upon it in 
the presence of an equal number of witnesses from each side. The 
iron was kept upon the fire while a certain service was performed. 
At the eud of 'the last collect,' the iron was placed upon trestles, 
the man's hand was sprinkled with holy water, and then, at a sig- 
nal from the priest, he took up the iron and carried it a measured 
distance of nine of his own feet ; then, dropping it, he rushed to 
the altar, where his hand was bound up with a sealed cloth, to be 
removed at the end of three days, when his guilt or innocence 
would be declared, according to the state of his hand. In the 
ordeal by hot water, the accused had to take up a stone immersed 
in boiling water to the depth of his wrist or elbow, as the case 
might be. In the ordeal by cold water, he was let down into a 
pool of water by a rope an ell and a half long. If he sank, he was 
innocent. If he floated, he was guilty. " ^ 

It may be wondered how any one could escape at such a trial, 
save by the connivance or trickery of those who officiated. But 
by comparing with the later laws of the Norman and Angevin 
period, it appears that the ordeal was more of the nature of a penalty 

1 As the ordeal was to be single, double, or triple. 
^ Ramsay, J, p. 293. 



INSTITUTIONS LOSE POPULAR CHARACTER 91 

than a trial, and was imposed only in the case of a notorious per- 
son, who could not get the requisite number of qualified guar- 
antors to swear to his good character. Moreover, if the accused 
succeeded in passing the test, though his life was spared, he was 
compelled to leave the country. 

"With the change in the standing of freemen, the government 
correspondingly lost its old popular character. The ancient folk- 
moot never got beyond the shire court. In the consoli- 
lar character dated kingdom the witenagemot exercised all the 
'functions of the popular assembly. By its counsel and 
consent charters were granted, laws were formulated, kings, ealdor- 
men, and bishops were chosen; by it high offenders were tried. It 
represented not the people, but the great landholding aristocracy, 
centered in the king and the royal family. To this fact was 
undoubtedly due the growing severity of the laws which fell most 
heavily upon the lower classes. At tiqies the landholders appear 
calling for laws so severe that the king refuses to grant them ; as 
when the witan proposed to Athelstan that a free woman who 
turned thief be drowned, or that a male slave be stoned to death 
and a female slave be burnt alive. 

Another change which belongs to this era is significant of the 

drift of the national institutions. We have seen the old ealdormen 

acting as the simple chiefs of the fyrd in the shire, 

Befjinnina of Tin i i n t 

the great sonietiimg like the modern lords lieutenant of the 
counties; but by the time of Edmund and Edred tlie 
ealdormen begin to appear as provincial governors, almost as sub- 
kings, each in his own group of shires. Under Edred, whose 
feeble health possibly made the extension of such a system a neces- 
sity, in order to relieve him of the burdens of directly administer- 
ing the enlarged kingdom, there are seven such provincial 
governors or viceroys south of the liumber, to whom the reorgani- 
zation of Northumbria added still an eighth. This important 
office, to which the Danish term earl ^ was soon to be commonly 
applied, was not yet hereditary, but its semi-regal nature was 
recognized in that it was generally reserved for members of the 
royal family, the ethelings, and could be conferred only by the 
^ See note on p. 86. 



92 RECONQUEST OF DANELAGH [edebd 

consent of the witan. The ealdorman, or earl, supported his own 
court, was protected by a wergeld equal to that of the bishop, and 
surrounded himself with his own thanes. Under a strong king, 
these powerful viceroys might be of real service in simplifying the 
task of governing so large a territory. But under weak kings and 
minors, such as now began to succeed to the throne of Alfred, the 
institution was allowed to fall into the hands of ambitious and 
unscrupulous men, and by undermining the royal authority 
became a source of immeasurable mischief. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE DATS OP DUNSTAN ; THE EARLT ENGLISH KINGDOM PASSES 

MERIDIAN 

As the last years of the ninth century are associated with the 
great name of Alfred, the last years of the tenth century are asso- 
ciated with the great name of Dunstan. This remark- 
of^D'^nTm^ able man was not a king, but an ecclesiastic and a monk, 
the first of a long line of churchly statesmen, of whom 
are Lanfranc, Anselm, Becket, Langton, and Wolsey, who have 
directed English history, and at times exerted a greater influence 
upon the life of the nation than its kings. 

Dunstan was born a short time before the death of Edward the 
Elder.-' His family, of good old West Saxon stock, lived in Glaston- 
bury and had its representatives high in influence in the church. 
His education began in the monastery school of his native town. 
The lad was precocious, deeply sensitive, and somewhat stormy 
in disposition. He had, moreover, a most unpleasp,nt way of 
seeing visions and bringing forth for the benefit of his godless com- 
panions, messages fresh hot from the other world. He was not pop- 
ular. What dreamer has been from Joseph down? So Dunstan 
also was vigorously hated for his pains, and finally driven from 
Glastonbury by open violence. 

Elfege, the bishop of Winchester, was a kinsman of Dunstan, 
and to him the young scholar, smarting under the indignities 
which had been heaped upon him by his fellow pupils at 
'ou'mfan^ Glastonbury, fled for refuge and consolation. At this 
time a nevt^ religious awakening, which had begun in the 
old mona&tery of Cluny, was arousing the Benedictine societies of 
the continent, aud though England had not yet responded to the 
movement, here and there were pious souls who were earnestly 

' The year 924, commonly given, is evidently an errox'. 

93 



94 DATS OF DUlSrSTAN [edmdnd 

longing for a better day. Of this number was Elfege, who 
found in the ascetic nature of his young kinsman a fruitful soil for 
the germination of his own peculiar ideas. Dunstan, however, did 
not yield himself to the monastic life without a struggle. A vision 
of another kind had filled his heart of late, which his monastic 
guides taught him was of the devil. But at last the battle was 
won. The fresh young girlish face, for such was the vision, was 
banished, and the student assumed the vows which committed him 
to a life of celibacy. Upon his return to his old home, his narrow 
cell and his rather ostentatious asceticism soon won for him a 
reputation for great sanctity. Strange stories adorned with the 
ready embellishments of the credulous, were eagerly received and 
repeated far and wide. Crowds came to gaze at the young monk, 
who was said to have miraculous trances in his cell and see portents 
in which the death of kings was foreshadowed. He was also said to 
hold personal altercations with the evil one. Had not the saint once 
seized the hooked nose with a pair of hot tongs and held it fast, nntil 
the whole neighborhood had been aroused by the Satanic bellowing? 
Before such irrefragable evidence Duustan's reputation for saintli- 
ness grew fast, until even the scoffers were convinced. But a fear- 
less saint in those days of general laxness and indifference to the 
laws of the church, was not a comfortable neighbor; audit was 
not long before the plain speech of Dunstan had made him many 
bitter enemies. Among these enemies was King Edmund himself; 
for Glastonbury had now for a long time been a royal residence 
city, and here the king often resorted with his court. At last 
Edmund drove the faithful monk away. But the young king by 
no means rested easy after he had thus silenced his John the Bap- 
tist; and while his conscience still rankled with its 

946. 

wound, a moment of great personal danger converted 
him into a thoroughgoing advocate of Dunstan's views. He sent 
after the exile, and with his own hands, it is said, placed him in 
the abbot's chair of the old monastery of Glastonbury. 

Glastonbury was at that time a fair representative of the 
few English monasteries that had survived the ninth century. 
Its buildings were in ruins; its livings were in the hands of 
mere clerks or parish priests, married men apparently for the 



946] DUNSTAN AND EDRED 95 

most part, distinguished as "seculars" from the "regular clergy"; 
that is, from those who lived according to the stricter rule of 

Benedict. Dunstan, as abbot, was free to introduce 
Reforms'at reforms to his heart's content; but he had evidently 

learned much from his early misfortunes and did not 
attempt to apply the old Benedictine rule at once. He began his 
reforms rather upon the material side first ; the recovery of lost 
lands, and the repair of buildings. No one could object to this. 
Then he gathered around him a company of young men, whom he 
carefully trained in the well-nigh forgotten rales of the monastic 
life. Thus he laid a broad foundation for the future. 

In the meanwhile Edred had been advanced to the throne 
made vacant by the dagger thrust of Leofa. He was not only in 

full sympathy with the aims of Dunstan, finding posi- 
Sdrei""*^'"' tions for his pupils, as Ethelwold who was appointed 

to the Abbey of Abingdon; but he also supported Odo, 
the Archbishop of Canterbury, in a far more radical movement, and 
encouraged the sending of English priests to the continent, where 
they came directly under the influence of such great centers of the 
new monastic reform as Eleury, and whence they returned to 
spread the sacred contagion at home. Dunstan, however, was no 
narrow recluse; he knew men, especially the unsanctified and 
worldly sort who surrounded the court of the king; and Edred 
soon found in him a most competent assistant in the administra- 
tion of his kingdom. He made him virtually his treasurer. The 
abbey became a royal depository. Here were placed the royal 
hoard and the charters or "title deeds" to the estates which the 
king held by book-right. 

At this time Dunstan appears without any of the stern 
angularities of the ascetic. If in his earlier days he had made 

some parade of the hair sliirt and leathern girdle and 

TJlC TYiCl'tXiVG 

cimractcr of narrow cell, he is now a man of "euffaging manners and 
refined tastes. Instead of shunning the society of the 
ladies of the court, he has learned the art of making himself both 
agreeable and useful. He can draw patterns of rare beauty for 
their needle work. He is a performer on the harp of such won- 
drous skill, that the ravishing tones which thrill from his fingers 



96 DAYS OF DUNSTAN" [edked 

seem to come from the touch of holy inspiration. He is still a great 
dreamer but his dreams are no longer, the vagaries of "the som- 
nambulist." He is a poet, an artist, a statesman. His imagina- 
tion is as vivid as ever but it no longer betrays him into "seeing 
things at night." He is practical, self-controlled, and dominated 
by moderation and good sense. 

Apparently he had no taste for speculation or literary compo- 
sition. If he ever committed himself to parchment, nothing, not 
even a title, remains. Yet he was a dexterous penman 

.J^CCOTTiloTisJ}/' 

mentsof and in accordance with the fashion of the times, could 
ornament a manuscript with the most expert. Some 
of Edred's charters are believed to be his work, besides a drawing 
of Christ with the artist prostrate at his feet. He possessed also a 
special skill in metal work. His cell at Glastonbury, it is said, 
was equipped with forge and anvil, where he was accustomed to 
toil at his favorite art far into the night. To the early medieval 
mind there was always something uncanny associated with the 
mysteries of the craft ; — witness the choice old legend of Wieland 
the Smith, — possibly connected with the fitful glare of the forge, 
the glowing iron on the anvil, the sounding blows, the showering 
sparks ; and it was perhaps to this v\^izard-like accomplishment of 
the young monk that the legend of his visit from the evil one is 
due. The organ of Malmesbury and the chime of bells of Canter- 
bury long remained, by no means silent testimonies of his achieve- 
ments. He also knew how to model in wax and carve in wood and 
bone. 

It was as a statesman that Dunstan brought his practical mind 
to bear directly upon the problems of the age. Here his niodera- 
^ , tion is as conspicuous as that sanctified worldliness 

Dunstan as ^ 

statesman. -wliich makes him the model ecclesiastical statesman 
of all times. He was in "Jull sympathy with the ascetic revival 
of his age; yet he never went to the extremes of some of his 
contemporaries, but recognized the strength of the ties which 
bound the married clergy to their families, and even after 
he had become archbishop of Canterbury with all the power of 
Edgar to support him, he attempted no ruthless warfare against 
those who had already entered the married state. He sought, 



955] CHOICE OF EDWY ' 97 

rather, to bring up a generation of younger men, to take the place 
of their elders as they fell at their posts, better trained, and thus 
saved from their errors. 

When Edmund was struck down by the outlaw he left two 
sons, Edwy and Edgar. But they were too young then to be 

entrusted with the royal authority, and the witan had 
EdwiT^^^ wisely passed them by in favor of their uncle Edred. 

Now, however, Edred was dead and there was no fourth 
son of the noble Edward to raise to the throne ; and the witan were 
forced to turn again to Edwy, the eldest son of Edmund, then 
possibly in his sixteenth year. 

The choice was not happy. The conscience of Europe was 
everywhere turning from the license tolerated by a more barbarous 

age to a stricter life. Not only was celibacy enioined 

The choice . 

of Edwy as the most holy state for the clergy, but princes and 
nobles were forbidden unions which their fathers had 
regarded with no disfavor. The great Athelstan himself had been 
the child of such a union, and no one had hesitated to do 
him homage on that account. But the revival had now reached 
England and, passing bejond the monasteries, was rapidly win- 
ning the approval of the public conscience. It was exceedingly 
unfortunate, therefore, at such a time when the trumpet had 
been put to lips that were iron bound, and the drowsy con- 
science of the nation was at last awaking, that the most available 
candidate for the throne should be Edwy, a mere lad of fifteen, 
willful and headstrong and, withal, directly under the influence of 
Ethelgiva, a woman of evil reputation, who was solely bent upon 
marrying the king to her daughter Elgiva. During the reigns of 
Edmund and Edred the influence of Edward's widow,^ Edgiva, 
had been all powerful, nor was she inclined now to yield her 
supremacy to the intriguing Ethelgiva, but brought all her influ- 
ence to bear in preventing the proposed marriage. She found 
powerful allies in Dunstan and Archbishop Odo and other leaders 
of the ecclesiastical reform. For, as an additional objection to 
the marriage, Edwy and Elgiva were related and thus came within 
the degree of consanguinity forbidden by the church. 

^ It is too early to speak of an English queen, or a queen mother. 



98 DATS OF DUNSTAIS" [edw 

The quarrel came to an open rupture at the coronation feast at 

Kingston, when the witan had gathered at the king's board to do 

him honor. Wine was flowing freely; the boisterous 

'Expulsion of 

Dimstan, revelrv shook the old root, and reechoed irom distant 

955. . 

halls. But the young king grew vt^eary of the cheer, 
and slipped away from the royal company of his thanes to the 
apartments of Ethelgiva and her daughter. When the noisy 
guests noted the absence of their king, and learned whither he had 
gone, they bade Dunstan fetch him. The abbot found the truant 
and, after some high words, took him by the hand and drew him 
back to the banqueting hall to meet his angry thanes. The boy 
king could not forget the humiliation of his coronation night, and 
at the instigation of Ethelgiva, soon began a deliberate attack 
upon Dnnstan and Edgiva. Dnnstan was the greatest man of the 
kingdom, and, with the exception of Odo, possibly the most influ- 
ential. It was inevitable that such a man should have many 
malignant and unscrupulous enemies, who would be only too 
glad to join in the rout when once the hue and cry was raised. 
The temporary triumph of Edwy and Ethelgiva was the signal 
for all these dark spirits to pronounce themselves. Dunstan was 
charged with malversation in the care of the late king's treasury. 
By English custom he should be tried before the witenagemot, 
but Ethelgiva had too many friends among the witan for him to 
expect a fair trial at their hands, and he accordingly withdrew to 
Flanders to wait for the storm to blow over. Edgiva also was 
driven from the court. 

Ethelgiva was now virtually the ruler of England, and her first 
act was to secure her influence by the marriage of her daughter to 

the king. She sought also to win a church party of 
TriwTvph of J. ./ 

the church her owu by numerous grants to churches and monas- 
party. 

teries. But no government could long survive which 

had been founded upon the open violation of what the reform 
spirit of the age was coming to regard as the sacred law of Chris- 
tendom. In 957 the great lords of Mercia and Northumbria 
broke into open revolt and set up Edgar, the younger brother of 
Edwy, as their king. In Wessex also the church party carried on 
a relentless war against Ethelgiva, and next year Odo succeeded 



959-962] ELEVATION OP DUNSTAN" 99 

in divorcing King Edwy and in banishing the hated mother-in- 
law. We may riot believe the stories of the brutal treatment of 
the poor little bride ;^ but the defection of the northern earls 
was quite enough to frighten the boy king, especially with 
Archbishop Odo thundering terrible things in his ears; even a 
stouter heart and an older head might have hesitated. In 959 
after four years, most unhappy years we may believe, the wretched 
young king died, and Wessex quietly passed to his brother Edgar, 
who since 957 had been king over all England north of the 
Thames. 

Edgar had already recalled Dunstan and made him bishop of 
Worcester. In 959 the see of London was also added to his care. 

And when, in the same year, the death of both Odo and 
Bwii^"^ Edwy left Edgar free to name his candidate for the 

archiepiscopal throne, there was in all the kingdom but 
one man to be considered, and Dunstan was named as Odo's suc- 
cessor. Dunstan now stood next to the king in honor and influ- 
ence, and the long era of peace and prosperity which attended the 
sixteen years of Edgar's reign was due in no small degree to the 
primate's sage counsel, and the consistent and statesmanlike policy 
to which he committed the king. 

Under Edgar the religious revival was not allowed to slacken. 
He had hardly become seated, when the monastic drift of the. 

nation was greatly deepened and strengthened by the 

Ti^rlnnv flip <-> J ± o J 

Peaceful. appearance of a pestilence, the "sudden death," which, 
the church starting ]n the centers of population, sweet the kins:- 
dom far and wide. In 962 London also was ravaged by 
a serious conflagration. Monastic thought was in the air, and the 
people readily saw in these af&ictions a punishment for their dis- 
obedience in not conforming to the laws of the church. The king, 
who had been from his youth under the influence of Dunstan, was 
thorougl]ly possessed with this idea, and everywhere enforced the 
demands of the reformers. In this he was ably seconded by 
Oswald, the nephew of Odo, who had been trained at Eleury, and 
in 961 had succeeded Dunstan at Worcester; and also by Ethel- 
wold, the abbot of Abingdon, the former pupil of Dunstan. As a. 
^ They belong to a period long subsequent to Odo's death. 



100 , DATS OF DUNSTAN" [ 



Edgar the Peaceful 



result of the powerful influence brought to bear by such leaders, 
supported by the king and upheld by the sentiment of the people, 
the married clergy were compelled to put away their wives and 
conform to the ecclesiastical law. Training schools or semi- 
naries for monks, with regular courses of study extending over two 
or three years, were also established, and from them young men, 
imbued with the new idea of the monastic life, were regularly sent 
out upon missions into other fields. New abbeys were founded, 
according to tradition to the number of forty, and old foundations 
restored. Thus arose Ramsey in Huntingdon, associated with the 
name of Oswald ; Ely and Medehamstede, the latter soon to be 
known as Peterborough, both associated with the name of Ethel wold. 
Edgar and Dunstan, however, had other work to do besides 
that of reforming monks and building monasteries. The Danish 

inroads had ceased, but the unruly lords of the isles had 
naval power ^° ^^ ^Q^t in subjection. According to a respectable 

but hardly credible tradition, Edgar maintained a fleet 
of 3,600 sail, with which he patroled his coasts each year. It is 
probable that the famous review at Chester of 973,^ in which, it is 
said, Edgar was borne along in a barge rowed by six vassal kings, 
was a part of one of these annual manceuvers. 

As with his predecessors, it is difficult to distinguish particular 
institutions which date from Edgar's reign, and yet the era was 

one in which the growth of English institutions was 
vroaressof'^ markedly deepened and strengthened. The West Saxon 
reim^'^ shire system was unquestionably extended to the Hum- 

ber. The Mmdred or, as it was called north of Watling 
Street, the wapentake, appears in the laws for the first time by 
name, and its functions, the times of holding the court, and the 
duties of its officers are fixed by ordinance. The system which 
Athelstan had enjoined, of organizing each community into gilds 
for better protection against thieving, also appears merged in the 
hundred; the subdivision or group of ten being represented 
in the tithing. The system by which each man was compelled 
to find a perpetual surety, who should be responsible for 
him before the local court was also extended and strengthened. 
^Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 973. 



975] REGULATION" OF TEADE 101 

The times of meeting of the higlier courts were fixed. The 
"Ordinance of the Hundred" prescribed that the hundred 
court should meet "always in four weeks," but the hurli-gemot 
should be held "thrice in the year," and the sMre-gemot twice. 
That Edgar and his advisers understood the nature of the national 
institutions was attested by a law designed to protect the rights 
of the local courts and prevent an unnecessary appeal to the king, 
which prescribed that such appeals should be received only when 
the local court had refused to recognize the plea of the plaintiff, or 
when the "law was too heavy." so that a mitigation might in 
justice be sought. 

The king also turned his attention to commerce and trade. He 

sought to give confidence and security to all honest transactions by 

establishing in each borough or hundred a body of notaries or 

qualified witnesses, to attest all bargains, and so protect 

Attempts to \ „ „ ■, ■, . 

regulate the holder 01 goods from the charge of fraud or thiev- 
ing. This regulation was evidently only the extension 
and more practical application of the principle which Athelstan 
had sought to embody in his laws, by which all transactions must 
be held within a city. Another law prescribed the use of only one 
kind of money in the kingdom, and one standard of weights and 
measures, that of London and Winchester. These laws were 
undoubtedly salutary, and reveal the rapid development of true 
ideas of the function of government as represented in the kingship 
of the tenth century. Some of the laws, however, were not so 
wise; as when the king by enactment attempted to keep up the 
price of wool, a law like many of the laws of the era framed not in 
the interest of the peopl-e, but in the interest of the great land- 
owners. The law is further noteworthy, since it shows that even 
at this period wool-growing had become an important English 
industry.^ 

Edgar died on the 8th of July, 975. Although he had but just 

passed his thirty-second birthday, he had been a king for eighteen 

years; sixteen of which he had ruled as sole king over 

Edmr,975. the English. His policy was one of peace. He left to 

his earls the administr ation, each of his own earldom, 

1 For laws of Edgar, see Stubbs, S. C, 68-72. 



102 DAYS OF DUNSTAN [ 



Edwabd the Martyr 



while he contented himself with securing the peace and quiet of 

the realm. He maintained terms of friendly intercourse with the 

Celtic kings of the north ; he went so far in his efforts 

Character to conciliate the Danes, that his own people found 
of reign. ' ^ -^ 

fault with his favoritism for "outlandish men." Dun- 

stan's hand, perhaps, may be seen in this, as well as in the 
dramatic f^tes and pageants by which he sought to secure for his 
king that outward grandeur which belonged to him as a king over 
kings. The glories of the great coronation fete at Bath and the 
famous boat procession at Chester, long lingered in the traditions 
of the age. But the shadow was already mounting on the dial. 
Edgar " the Peaceful" is the last of the great kings of the House 
of Alfred. The old West Saxon kingship was not equal to the task 
to which it had been summoned. The extension of the shire sys- 
tem of Wessex was a step in the right direction; but the inspira- 
tion by which this vast body of shires, with their hundred courts 
and borough courts, should be kept to their duties must come 
from the king. The king, however, could not be everywhere. 
The machinery needed constant supervision and watchfulness that 
justice might be done, or the power of officials not be used to 
oppress the people. This could be accomplished only by extendin«g 
the system of great earldoms which we have already seen in opera- 
tion under Edred. Under Edgar and his great minister this 
scheme no doubt worked well. "Twice every year the king rode 
through every shire, inquiring into the law-dooms of the men in 
authority, and showing himself a powerful avenger in the name of 
justice." But under weaker men the results were very different. 
The earls became too powerful for subjects, too independent for 
ministers, and in the face of a victorious foe, were only too ready 
to betray their sovereign in order to make advantageous terms for 
themselves. 

After the death of Edgar, England was compelled -once more 

to endure the reign of a minor. Edgar had left two sons, — 

Edward and Ethelred. Dunstan and the other min- 

Martyr, isters of the late king favored the succession of Edward ; 

but Elfrida, the second wife of Edgar and mother of 

Ethelred, an ambitious and unscrupulous woman, was not willing 



975] A]SrTI-MON"ASTIC KEACTIOK 103 

to see her son and herself also, the partner of Edgar's greatness, 
set down to a second place. The influence of Dunstan with the 
witan, however, prevailed and Edward was duly crowned. But 
his reign was a short one. The breach had apparently been healed, 
but Elfrida only bided her time. On the 18th of March, 978, 
the young king who had been hunting, stopped at his stepmother's 
castle for refreshment. As he was about to ride away, the parting 
CU23 which the laws of hospitality of the age prescribed was pre- 
sented to him, but, as he took it, he was stabbed in the back by 
one of Elfrida's servants. Edward's youth and the circum- 
stances of his death appealed powerfully to the people, and they 
saw in him a martyr sacrificed to the deep animosity of the old 
anti-monastic party. 

A powerful reaction had, in fact, set in against the ecclesiastical 

policy of the late king, and Elf her, the Ealdorman of Mercia, had 

driven out the monks of Edgar by force, and reinstated 

monastic the married clergy. The earls of East Anglia and Essex 
reaction. 

had taken the other side. Ramsey Abbey had been 

garrisoned, and the fyrd called into the field to defend the "regu- 
lars." Turbulent synods were held, in which the attempt had 
been made to solve the difficulties of the hour by a noisy war of 
words, and with the usual results. In one of these synods, held at 
Calne, while Dunstan was speaking, the floor of the overcrowded 
room had suddenly given way, and the audience been precipi- 
tated to the room below. While many were injured, some seriously, 
Dunstan had managed to save himself by seizing hold of a cross 
beam. To the wrought-up imagination of his friends the deliver- 
ance appeared to be a miracle. To his enemies the whole sad 
affair appeared to be the result of the treachery or the evil power 
of the great archbishop, whom they affected to regard as a wizard. 
What part the boy king Edward, who Avas only thirteen or four- 
teen at most when he began to reign, had had in all this strife does 
not appear; save that he had been the avowed candidate 

Part of i. L 7 

Edwardin of Dunstan, Oswald, and Ethelwold, the leaders of the 

the strife. . ' ^ , ' 

monastic party. Yet Elfher, the Earl of Mercia, whom 
we have seen in the field against the monks, seems to have been 
the only subject to care enough about the "martyr king" to give 



104 DATS OP DUNSTAN" [ethklbee 

him a royal burial, while Dimstan and Oswald within a month 

after the assassination appear at Kingston, performing their parts 

in the hallowing of Elfrida's son Etbelred. To Dun- 
Ethelred . ^ . . • n i , 

king^ April stan s honor, however, it is to be said that he could not 

act with Elfrida and those whose hands were stained 
with the blood of assassination. From this time he disappears 
from political life. 

In the meantime England was sinking rapidly under the mis- 
fortunes which from the first had attended the unlucky reign of 

Ethelred, — misfortunes which the age regarded as a just 

Danish iiidgment, considering the way in which the throne had 

inroads, 9S0. , ® ' , . , 7 , , i i . 

been secured. As if it were not enough that the king- 
dom be riven by the strife of the secular clergy and the regular 
clergy, or that men like Elfric, the son of Elfher of Mercia, whom 
the people regarded as responsible for the murder of Edu^ard, 
appear among the earls, the Danish inroads which had practically 
ceased since the reign of Edward the Elder, must also begin 
afresh. England, under the rule of a boy and a woman, a boy of 
thirteen, and a woman who was hated for her great crime, was as 
helpless as in the days of Ethel wnlf. A beggarly band of Danes, 
three hundred men all told, were allowed to sack Southam|)ton 
and slaughter the most of the inhabitants. From Southampton 
they went to Thanet, which they ravaged in the same cruel fash- 
ion. In the same year another force overran the county of Ches- 
ter. In 981 there were similar ravages in Devonshire and 
Cornwall. The next year the coasts of Dorset lay paralyzed and 
panic-stricken, at the mercy of a small band who came in three 
ships and were probably not more than one hundred and fifty 
strong. Another force plundered South Wales. Then the new 
invasion seems to have spent itself, and for a few years the land 
was again at peace. 

Within the kingdom matters were going from bad to worse. 

Ethelred's advisers quarreled with Elfric of Mercia, and succeeded 

in driving him out of the country. It was a fatal 

triumph, for Elfric repaired to Denmark and joined 

himself with the bitterest enemies of his country. But Ethelred 

seemed doomed from the first to scatter such stumbling-blocks in 



986] LAST DAYS OP DUNSTAIST 105 

his own path. In 986 he quarreled with Elfstan, the Bishop of 
Rochester, and to settle the difficulty called out the fyrd and 
besieged the bishop in his episcopal city. Dunstan was doubly 
interested and came forth from his seclusion to save the bishop. 
He is the same Dunstan as of old. We catch the gleam of the old 
fire in the threat of excommunication by which he strove to awe 
the willful king. But when this failed, instead of carrying out 
the spiritual menace, he, the same shrewd man of the world, 
offered to buy off the king for £100. The king took the money 
and sent home his people. Thus Ethelred, who at this time had 
reached his twenty-third year, was already giving abundant evi- 
dence of the character which he has left to history, curious com- 
pound of "violence, weakness, and meanness." The era was at 
hand when early England needed another Alfred or another 
Edward the Elder, her greatest and best, but instead the irony 
of fate had given her an Ethelred "the Redeless" her meanest. 
Then, too, the great men of the past generation were slipping 
away. In 984 England lost Ethelwold, "Father of the Monks," 
the old abbot of Abingdon, who since 963 had been bishop of 

Winchester. Dunstan survived his great pupil hardly 
Dwistmi 9S6 ^^^ years, dying as he had lived, with the harness on, 

in good works, active to the last. He was then up- 
wards of sixty-five or possibly seventy years of age and had retained 
his vigor to the end. A grateful people long remembered him, 
"his delight to make peace between man and man," his modera- 
tion, his genial hospitality, his strict justice, his integrity, his 
sage wisdom. He "was canonized in popular regard almost from 
the day he died," and soon became the favorite saint of the old 
English Church, and held his place until his fame was eclipsed by 
the later St. Thomas of Canterbury. After Alfred he is the 
greatest man of early England. 



CHAPTER VII 



THE DECLINE OF THE EAELT ENGLISH KINGDOM; THE ERA OF 

DANISH KINGS 



RIVAL ENGLISH AND DANISH ROYAL FAMILIES 

Edgar, 959-975 
= 1 Ethelfleda = 2 Elfrida 



I 
Edward the 
Martyr, 975-978 

= 1 Elfleda 



Ethelred the 

Eedeless, 9' 



1016 
2 Emma 



Edmund Ironside, 
1016 



Alfred 

the 

Etheling 



Edward 

the 

Confessor, 

1043-1066 



Edmund 



Edward the Outlaw 



Edgar 

tlie 
Etheling 



Margaret = 
Malcom Oanmore, 
King of Scots 
I 
Matilda = Henry I 



Christina 



Sweyn Forkbeard 
1013, 1014 

I 
Canute, 1016-1035 



1 Elgiva 



2 Emma 



Sweyn, 
King of 
Norway 



Harold 
Harefoot 
1036-1039 



Hardicanute 
1039-1042 



It can not be said that Ethelred was the most wicked and con- 
temptible of English kings, for he must share this doubtfnl honor 

with the Angevin John. But, if John was wicked, he 
John was not weak; Ethelred was both wicked and weak. 

John almost commands respect as he rouses himself 
with all the old vigor of his race to battle with his enemies. 
There is something heroic in the very desperation of his struggle 
against insuperable odds. But Ethelred never elicits any other 
feeling than one of contempt. He is unable to form plans of his 
own; he is unwilling to carry out those of others. He is head- 
strong, rash, and incapable; always in trouble, yet never learning 
anything from his blunders. He is vicious, treacherous, and cruel ; 
and, withal, in an age when battle courage was the commonest of 
virtues, he is a miserable coward. Like John he owed his throne 
to the intriguing of an unscrupulous mother; an intrigue also which 
ended in murder. Like John his baseness stifled all loyalty in his 
court, and drove from his side the trusted counsellors of father and 
elder brother. Like Jolm his tyrannies brought on a foreign 

106 



980] DECLINE OF ENGLISH KINGDOM 107 

invasion and drove his people to disown him for a foreign prince. 
Here, however, the comparison ends. John died just in the nick 
of time, and saved 'England from foreign conquest; but Ethelred 
lived on to witness the full results of his evil life, and died when it 
was too late to undo the mischief. Unlike John, moreover, Ethel- 
red was hardly responsible for all the misfortunes of his reign ; yet, 
had he been a better man and wiser king, he might have risen above 
his troubles and left a name as glorious as that of any king of his 
race. But, as it was, by blunders without number, through base- 
ness indescribable, he contrived in a reign of thirty-seven years to 
plunge England from the height to which she had been raised by 
the great kings of the House of Wessex, into an abyss in which 
she was saved from complete disintegration only by the iron hand 
of the conqueror. 

Since the days of Alfred Denmark and Norway had been pass- 
ing through a series of transformations quite as significant as those 

which had attended the recent development of England. 
Character The era of "creek men" and "sea kings" was receding; 
Danish wars, the petty tribal states had been destroyed, and the era 

of the national kingdom had begun. When, therefore, 
at the close of the tenth century an English king found himself 
with another Danish war on his hands, he was confronted with a 
problem very different from that which had so taxed the resources 
of the English kingdoms in the ninth century. He was now com- 
pelled to meet powerful national kings, leading not bands of petty 
adventurers but disciplined and regularly organized armies, who 
came not for plunder and rapine merely, but with the definite pur- 
pose of conquest and annexation. It was against such an enemy 
that Ethelred was now called upon to defend his kingdom. 

The successive stages of the new Danish war, or rather series 
of Danish wars, are easily distinguished. There had already 

begun during the last days of Dunstan a series of 
mnLh'^^^'^'^^' clesultory raids quite like those of the early ninth cen- 
sscf-jo"/*^""^' ^'^^y- These raids had exposed the weakness of the new 

administration, and encouraged the return of more 
formidable bands. They did not become serious, however, until 
the thirteenth year of Ethelred's reign, when a considerable horde 



108 DECLINE OE ENGLISH KINGDOM [ethklred 

landed upon the coast of East Anglia, plundered Ipswich, and a 
few days later defeated Byrhtnoth, the aged earl of the East 
Saxons, at Maldon. 

The king, instead of attempting to punish the pirates, offered 

them a bribe of £10,000 to go and leave him in peace, — "the first 

fatal precedent of Danegeld." The Danes took the 

mentsof bribe but did not depart; and in a few months other 

Danegeld, 991. i-xii,j.j! j? i ii 

bands, scenting the booty trom afar, descended upon 
England and made a second truce and a second payment of Dane- 
geld necessary. This time the price of peace was raised to £22,000. 
The effects of the encouragement which Ethelred had given to 
the freebooting trade were even more alarmingly apparent in 994, 

when the two royal buccaneers, Olaf of Norway and 
The raid of Sweyn "Eorkbeard" of Denmark appeared in the Thames 
Sweyn,o94. and fell upon the southeastern shires. Their object at 

this time was to levy blackmail pnre and simple. By 
a fury of "burnings and harryings and manslaughter," they sought 
to compel Ethelred to buy them off as he had bought off the 
others. But the country was impoverished by the recent levies, 
and the witan hesitated to authorize a new tax. Sweyn and Olaf, 
however, were not to be put off and kept up their depredations, 
cruelly wasting Essex, Kent, Sussex, and Hampshire, until the witan 
consented to their demands and paid over a Dauegeld of £16,000. 
These sums, in consequence of the enormous purchasing power of 
money in the tenth century, represented a real value out of all pro- 
portion to the present nominal value of like sums. Moreover they 
were probably levied by a direct tax upon the arable land of the 
kingdom, apportioned to the several earldoms with some view to 
their wealth. But under the crude methods of the time, in the 
absence of any accurate knowledge of the actual wealth of the 
various districts, and under the management of a king notoriously 
unjust and of a court notoriously corrupt, a fair .adjustment or an 
economical levy was out of the question. The sums actually paid 
to the Danes, in all probability, represented only a small part of 
the money which was taken from the people. Discontent, 
bribery of officials, and at last open resistance, were sure to 
attend such levies if repeated too often. 



995-1002] THE NORMAN MAREIAGE 109 

After the payment of the Danegeld Olaf and Sweyn sailed 
away; Olaf back to Norway and Sweyn into the Irish Sea, where 
he appears in the next season ravaging the Isle of Man. 
ofMa-'^-^^^ The ensuing eight years were by no means years of 
t^w^^oBs-iodt P^^ce or rest for English king or country. The 
inroads, however, were not as frequent nor were they 
as formidable or as widely extended. But, were the enemy many 
or few, the incompetency of the government remained the same. 
"Often was the fyrd gathered against the foe; but, so soon as they 
should have met them, through some cause, was flight ever resolved 
upon, and so the enemy ever had the victory." The Isle of Wight, 
apparently, remained in their hands. There were ravages on the 
Kentish coast and in Wiltshire; there were battles in Sussex and 
Devonshire. Rochester and Exeter were besieged; Waltham and 
other places were burned. The king gathered his ships, but "when 
they were ready he delayed from day to day, distressing the poor 
folk that were in them; and when things should have been for- 
warder, so were they ever backwarder; and ever he let the foe's 
army increase, and ever he drew back from the sea, and ever the 
enemy went after him; and so, in the end, it served for nothing 
but the folks' distress and wasting of money and emboldening the 
foe." The most that Ethelred seems to have accomplished was 
the recovery of the Isle of Man and the taking into his service of a 
pirate chief, Earl Pallig, the brother-in-law of Sweyn. 

So at last the fatal year 1002 drew on. It opened with 
another disgraceful truce and the payment of a Danegeld of £34,- 
000. The price of such truces was advancing. In the 
yea/ioo2 preceding year an ill-advised expedition had been 
^(ttiL^I'i"'*"' sent to Normandy to punish Duke Eichard because he 
had allowed the harbors of the Seine to shelter the 
Danish pirates; but, instead of bringing back the Norman duke in 
chains as Ethelred had instructed his lieutenants, they brought 
back the Lady Emma, the duke's sister, to be the bride of Ethel- 
red. She came in the early spring and brought with her a horde 
of Norman flunkies and hangers-on, — the first Norman invasion of 
England, — whose insolent ways and outlandish manners boded no 
good for a court already divided and torn by the bitter rivalries of 



110 DECLIN^E OP THE KINGDOM [ethelred 

jealous factions. Emma, moreover, was a woman of spirit, beau- 
tiful and cold-hearted as she was selfish. Ethelred already had a 
grown-up family about him, headed by the noble etheling 
Edmund. Here then was opportunity enough for clashing of 
interests, intrigue, open schism, and final treason; in the end, 
outweighing any temporary advantage which Etheliied might secure 
by an alliance with his powerful Norman neighbor. 

The Norman marriage was not the only nor the most serious 

blunder which Ethelred made in this fatal year. It seems that as 

a result of so many truces, as well as of a recent policy 

St. Brice's ' ./ ' j. ./ 

Dav,Novem- adopted by Ethelred of enlisting Danes in the English 

bCr 11, 1002 . ■ IT, . , T T . , Tl r • T 

service, there had been introduced into Mercia and 
Wessex a considerable Danish population. These new Danes had 
not yet had time to assimilate to the English stock, as the old 
Danes of the Danelagh; but remained still a separate population, 
the detestation of the English, who feared them, but durst not 
attack them, and of importance enough to excite the suspicion of 
the government. Soon after his marriage intelligence was brought to 
the king, that this floating Danish population had formed a plot 
to destroy him and the witan and seize the government. Ethelred, 
whose craven spirit made him an easy prey to all rumors of this kind, 
was thrown into a paroxysm of terror. He determined to strike 
first, and made his plans for the extermination of the unsuspecting 
Danes on the approaching St. Brice's Day. For once the plans 
of Ethelred were carried out, and with fatal completeness; 
neither degree, nor age, nor sex was spared. The entire Danish 
population of Mercia and Wessex was swept away. 

This deed was the most stupid of all the stupid blunders of 
this blundering king. The Danes were not only protected by 

recent truces, but many of them also were hostages. 
of^Sweni^ Ethelred, therefore, had violated laws which even pagan 

barbarians held sacred. The memory of his crime long 
rankled in the mind of Europe; sixty years afterward, it helped 
Duke William to justify the Norman invasion of England. Bnt 
of more immediate import was the fact that among the victims 
were GJunhild, the sister of Sweyn, her husband Earl Pallig, and 
their infant son. When the news reached Sweyn his wrath was ter- 



1003-1009] SECOND PERIOD OF THE WAR 111 

rible to see. He swore to be avenged on the assassin ; he would go to 
England, destroy Ethelred, and add England to his Danish kingdom. 
Sweyn was as good as his word, and in the spring of 1003 
began the series of operations which ended ten years later in the 
establishment of a Danish king in England. lie struck 
Swev7i's loar fi^gt at Wessex, the heart of Ethelred 's power. Exeter 

of revenge. ' _ ^ 

Second -^y^s carried by assault, and its walls thrown down. 

period of •' ' 

■^^f''!^^."''^^' From Exeter Sweyn moved eastward, plundering and 

lOOo, 1004, ^ ' i. <j 

burning with ungovernable fury until he reached South- 
ampton. Ethelred brought out the fyrd, but his earls upon one 
pretext or another refused to fight. The next year Sweyn 
descended upon the east coast, and Norwich suffered the fate of 
Exeter. Ulfcytel, one of the few true men who attended the 
king, called out the local levies and threw himself in the path of 
the foe. The task, however, was far too great for his strength; 
although he gave the Danes "worse hand-play" than they had yet 
met on English soil. 

In 1005 for reasons unknown, Sweyn did not return. The 
English, however, had little respite; for now a "hunger-need" 

fell upon the doomed land, "grimmer than any man 
Dancgeidof had mind of," the result of so much burning of fields 

and slaughter of cattle and "fyrding of men." In 
1006 soon after midsummer the Danes returned and ravaged the 
coasts of Kent and Sussex, until the November gales drove them 
into the Isle of Wight for shelter. Ethelred as usual did noth- 
ing, and with the return home of the fyrd after harvest time, 
even the pretense of keeping the field was abandoned ; and when 
in January the Danes, crossing from the Isle of Wight, started 
upon a raid up through Hampshire and Berkshire, "kindling 
their war beacons as they went," Ethelred fell back upon his old 
witless policy and secured a truce by a bribe of £36,000. 

Sweyn was not with the host this year, and there is no reason 
to think that he was a party to the truce. He was waging war, 

not for booty, but for conquest. The witan felt their 
ship fyrd insecurity, and determined to call upon the nation for a 

ship fyrd which would enable them to overthrow Sweyn 
upon his own element, and thus for all time deliver England from 



112 DECLINE OF THE KINGDOM [ethelred 

its foes. It was determined to call upon every three hundred and 
ten hides throughout England to furnish a ship of war, built and 
equipped, and upon every eight hides for a helmet and coat of mail. 
But when the great fleet was brought together, such a fleet as neither 
Athelstan nor Edgar had possessed, Ethelred's ill luck did not for- 
sake him. His leaders plotted against each other; one division of 
the fleet turned upon the king's people; another division was 
broken up by a storm and wrecked upon the coast of Sussex. 
Then the king brought the remnant of his ships around to Lon- 
don, and there laid them up to rot in the Thames. Thus the 
splendid fleet, which represented so much self-denial, such heroic 
sacrifice on the part of the people, and from which so much had 
been expected, had turned out to be only one more miserable 
fiasco; another signal illustration of the incompetency of Ethelred. 
No wonder that men, that even Ethelred himself, began to asso- 
ciate this long series of ever darkening calamities with the crime 
that had made him a king, or that Ethelred now accepted each 
new failure with the dull apathy of a doomed man. 

General despondency, the result of the growing conviction of 
utter helplessness, followed the collapse of the ship fyrd, and 

when in the following August a new fleet of the 
Descent of o o ^ 

ThurMii, enemy under Thurkill, mo]"e powerful than any which 

Sweyn had yet sent out, appeared ofl: Sandwich, men 
felt that the end could not long delay. Canterbury and eastern 
Kent made their own terms. The southern coast was ravaged as 
far as the Isle of Wight and back again. Then the enemy estab- 
lished themselves near London for the winter; keeping the city in 
constant alarm, and more than once threatening it with storm and 
sack. Marauding bands, in the meanwhile, swept the lower 
Thames valley, continually extending their operations in huge 
concentric circles, until at last, as the spring advanced, they 
passed the Chilterns and burned Oxford. Then they entered East 
Anglia, and spent three months in the same businesslike plunder 
of the eastern shires, burning Ipswich, and defeating the local 
levies under Ulfcytel ; the same Ulf cytel who six years before had 
given Sweyn such vigorous "hand-play." From East Anglia 
Thurkill returned to the Thames again, and renewed the plunder- 



1009-1013] THIRD PERIOD OP WAR 113 

ing of the middle counties. The fyrd took the field, but the 
people had lost heart. The king dragged them up and down in 
the wake of the Danes,* but seemed "never able to bring them to 
the right place in the right time." The king summoned his 
witan, but the spirit of the nation was broken; sixteen counties, 
one-third the area of England, had been laid waste; "no man 
would lead, no man would follow, no shire would help other." 
The disintegration was beyond recovery; there was no hope save in 
a new levy of Danegeld. The Danes demanded £-18,000, an enor- 
mous sum even for more prosperous times, but in its despair, the 
government had no other choice. The enormous ransom, how- 
ever, could not be paid at once, and the plundering went on. 
Canterbury was sacked, and its entire population driven away to 
the ships. The Archbishop Alfheah (St. Alphege) was held for a 
special ransom, and when he nobly refused to allow the poor of 
his church to be further robbed for his sake, a mob of drunken 
barbarians set upon him, nor satisfied their fury until they had 
done him to death. 

As Easter drew on the witan returned to the king, ealdormen 

and bishops bringing each his share of the tax and each feeling 

that it must be the last. Then the money was paid; 

Thirdperiod and the Danish host broke up. A part with Thurkill, 

Sweyn entered the service of Ethelred, but the greater num- 

becomes t -rx i o i 

itina,ioi3. ber returned to Denmark. Sweyn, however, was not 
satisfied. The strength of Wessex and East Anglia had 
been shattered ; Mercia and Northumbria were drained of their 
resources. All England was broken in spirit and disheartened; 
her earls had proved false, and her king worthless. It was the 
time, therefore, not for Sweyn to stay his hand, but to complete 
the conquest which he had sworn to accomplish six years before. 
Accordingly, only a few months after the breaking up of Thur- 
kill's horde, Sweyn appeared ofi; Sandwich, and passing on up the 
eastern coast entered the Humber and pushed his way by the 
Trent into old Danish Mercia as far as Gainsborough. Appar- 
ently, everything had been arranged with the people of eastern 
Mercia beforehand. On Sweyn's part, there were no plunderings 
of homes, no aimless burnings of farms or cities ; on the part of 



114 DECLINE OF THE KINGDOM [ethklred 

the people, there was a general flocking from all sides to forswear 
Ethelred and accept Sweyn. In a short time all north and east 
of Watling Street had gone over to the' new king. Then with 
food and horses freely supplied by his new subjects and his army 
swelled by new recruits, Sweyn crossed Watling Street and entered 
what of England still remained to Ethelred, The ravaging was 
resumed, but the country could make no resistance. Behind the 
defenses of London, Ethelred waited while his kingdom fell away 
from him; and hither, at last, came Sweyn to test the loyalty of the 
Londoners to their native king. Twice the Danes attempted to 
enter the city, and twice they were driven back with great 
slaughter, but Ethelred was already virtually deposed. At Bath 
the western thanes submitted to Sweyn, and with all England at 
last holding him for "full king" naught was left for the men of 
London but to make their own terms with the conqueror. 

For a while Ethelred, abandoned by all save the faithful 
Thurkill, lingered at Greenwich, and then withdrew to the Isle of 
Wight. Here upon the last English ground which he could call 
his own, he kept a sad Christmas feast, and then retired to Nor- 
mandy to join Emma and her children. So ended the year 1013; 
a more gloomy year had never fallen upon England; the land was 
wasted and desolate, the king an exile, and the people weary of 
their sufferings and without heart for the future. 

The war, however, was not yet ended, nor were the people to 
have rest. Sweyn survived the flight of Ethelred barely a month. 
He had shown no disposition to reorganize the govern- 
Siveyn, Feb- meut, but had spent his time in collecting Danegeld on 
his own account. The single month of Danish rule had 
satisfied the English; and although the host at once declared for 
Canute, Sweyn's son, the English turned to their exiled lord. 
There is a forlorn pathos in their words of greeting: "No lord was 
dearer than their own born lord could be, if he would rule them 
rightlier than he did before." Equally pathetic is the response: 
"He would be their true lord, and right what they misliked, and 
forgive all that had been said against him." So Ethelred, the 
abandoned king came back, and his witan received him. 

Canute, in the meanwhile, with his eyes upon the more sub- 



1015, 1016] LAST STAGES OP THE WAR 115 

stantial Danish throne, staid not to brave the awakening nation, 
but stole away in his ships and returned home. In Denmark, 
however, he received little encouragement ; the people had already 
chosen Harold, another son of Sweyn, and he sternly refused to 
share his crown with Canute. 

Ethelred's days were now fast ebbing. His strength was 
broken, and his health declining; yet his energy in mischief 
making was apparently as active as ever. The hope 
of the war, of the nation centered in his eldest son, the ethel- 
ing Edmund; but the king, instead of rejoicing in his 
son's popularity, chose to regard him as a rival, and lent a willing 
ear to the malicious tales of one Edric the Grasper, Earl of Mercia, 
Edmund's bitter enemy. While the court was thus torn by the 
disgraceful quarreling of father and son, news came of the reap- 
pearance of Canute off Sandwich. His first point of attack, how- 
ever, was Dorsetshire. Edmund and Edric called out the fyrd, but 
the bitter enmity of the two men made any cooperation impossible. 
The fyrd broke up in quite the old way without accomplishing any- 
thing, and Canute was left to overrun the western counties. Then 
Edric, believing no doubt that Ethelred's days were numbered, 
went over to Canute and persuaded the thanes of Wessex to fol- 
low his example; satisfying thereby his hatred of Edmund, and 
hoping no doubt to do him a grievous injury. Edmund bravely 
struggled on alone in the losing fight. A few months later 
Uhtred, Earl of IsTorthumbria, also abandoned him for Canute. 
Then Edmund fell back upon London, whither friends had already 
brought the dying Ethelred, a source of weakness and 
Etheired. dissension to the last. He was not an old man, pos- 
sibly not much past fifty, but he had lived far too 
long for the good of England; he died April 23, 1016. 

London was the only stronghold which held out for Ed- 
mund ; but he had no thought of waiting idly behind its walls 
until Canute should gather and organize the strength of 

The rally of . 

Edmund, England in order to drive him out. He proposed to 

show what Englishmen could do when led again by a 

brave and competent leader. And no doubt with the example of 

his great ancestor before him, he retired to Selwood Forest, and 



IIG DECLINE OF THE KINGDOM [ 



Edmund Ieonsidb 



under its shadows gathered the descendants of the men who had 
fought at Edington, With a small but determined band, steadily 
increasing as he advanced, he fought his way back to London, 
defeating the Danes at Penselwood, again at Sherston, and finally 
raising the siege of Loudon and winning a third victory at 
Brentford. The eyes of all loyal Englishmen now turned to 
Edmund. At last, here was a king who knew how to lead his 
people and win battles. Even the traitor Edric began to despair 
of the fortunes of Canute and in an evil hour was allowed to 
make his peace with Edmund. 

After Brentford, Edmund followed Canute to the south bank 
of the Thames, and overtaking him at Otford in Kent, forced 
him to retire across the estuary into Essex. Then 
AsMn don making a detour by land, Edmund again came up 
with the Danes near the modern Ashingdon. The 
English, confident in the skill and good fortune of their king, were 
eagerly looking forward to the struggle, which each side felt must 
settle the issue of the war, when occurred the fell treason, which 
in a trice undid all the victories of the past year. At the very 
moment when the English were entering the battle Edric the 
Grasper halted his Mercians and refused to fight. Edmund 
gallantly led forward the loyal men of Wessex, but, against 
the odds which now confronted him, victory was impossible. 
Yet from three o'clock until the gathering darkness of the 
short October day made it no longer possible for foe to see foe, 
the men of Wessex fought on. Then they withdrew and under 
cover of the night the fyrd broke up. But the Danes were in no 
mood to follow ; the roads were unknown, and the country hostile. 
They too had suffered in the royal "hand-play" of "rank thrust- 
ing at rank with sword and spear." They were, moreover, "weary 
of fighting and marching and working of ships," and thought no 
longer of conquest, but only of truce. In a few days Edmund 
would return with another army, and then certain expulsion, if 
not extermination, awaited them. 

But Edric's treason was not yet complete; he now exerted his 
influence among the witan to persuade them to demand a cessa- 
tion of hostilities. Edmund protested; but his protest was over- 



1016] POLICY OF CANUTE 117 

The truce ruled, and at Alney near Gloucester he was compelled 
to accept Canute as under-king, and cede to him all 
England, saving only Wessex and East Anglia. 

Edmund survived this disgraceful treaty only a few weeks. 
Later accounts ascribe his death to Edric, secretly encouraged by 
Canute. But it is more than likely that the events 
Edmund, of the seven months past, the incessant campaign- 
ing, the five pitched battles, the cruel disajipoint- 
ment in the moment of success, were too great a strain even for 
his vigorous constitution. His death was a national calamity. His 
brilliant triumphs are "the best commentary on the imbecility of 
Ethelred, and show that it was not so much the degeneracy of 
Englishmen as the incompetence of the government that had been 
responsible for the disasters of his reign." 

The death of Edmund left Canute undisputed lord of England. 
He was then a young man, probably not far from his twenty-first 
year. Yet with remarkable clearness of vision and 
camite soundness of judgment he grasped the conditions which 

confronted him. He saw that what the English needed 
most was peace; but that a stable and lasting peace could be 
established only by first securing his power against the machinations 
of possible reactionary plotters. Accordingly, almost his first act 
was to seize the archtraitor Edric and put him to death. Other 
executions also followed, by no means as justifiable. The infant 
sons of Edmund, whom probably he did not dare to destroy, he 
sent off to Norway for safe keeping; but Edwy, a brother of 
Edmund Ironsides, was outlawed and afterward slain. 

When Canute had removed the men whose presence he regarded 
as a menace to the peace which he would make, he stayed his hand, 
and addressed himself to the task of winning the confi- 
Canute^ dence and support of the English. Though no English- 
man, he understood the English nature far better than 
their "own born lord." He connected his reign with the past by 
proclaiming the laws of Edgar; he assured his people of fair treat- 
ment by placing Englishmen and Danes upon the same footing 
before the law; and to fortify his position in the only direction 
from which he might expect a challenge to his right to the throne, 



118 



DECLINE OF THE KINGDOM 



[C 



he sought and won the hand of the Lady Emma, the widow of 
Ethelred. He sought also to strengthen. the conservative elements 
of English society by favoring the clergy and increasing the power 
of the local landlords. He also strengthened the great earldoms, 
bestowing a power upon the earls of Mercia, Northumbria, 

and East Anglia 
coordinate with 
the power which 
he himself exer- 
c i s e d directly 
over Wessex. If 
he put the loy- 
alty of his new- 
subjects to the 
test by the levy 
of an enormous 
Danegeld, the 
end surely 
would find fa- 
vor in their 
sight. For by 
this tax he was 
enabled to pay 
off his army and 
send the greater 
part of it home. 
Henceforth his 
throne must 
rest upon the 
loyalty of the 
English people. 
In 1019 Canute was recalled to Denmark by the death of his 
brother Harold. Three years of Canute's rule had made England 
The ciiarter a united and peaceful country, and he left it without 

of C^ftfifitf 

mo. ' fear to the charge of Thnrkill, whom he had made Earl 
of East Anglia. He returned, however, the next year in time to 
take part in the Easter feast. The so-called charter of Canute 




1020-1025] THE CHARTER OF CANUTE 119 

is commonly assigned to this year. The opening paragraph is a 
greeting to his people after his safe return. He then recounts 
the measures which he has taken for the peace of the realm, and 
calls upon all good people to "thank God Almighty for the mercy 
that he has done for our help." He commands his earls to "help 
the bishops to God's right and to my royal authority and to the 
behoof of all the people." Edgar's law is reaffirmed as the law of 
the kingdom; all unrighteousness is to be eschewed; Sunday's 
festival is to be kept "from Saturday's noon to Monday's dawn- 
ing"; and no man may either go to market or seek any court "on 
that Holy Day. " ^ 

In 1023 occurred an event which shows with what pains Canute 

sought to take advantage of the susceptibilities of the English. 

St. Dunstan's Day had already been added to the calen- 

tionof dar in 1018. Canute now, with great ceremony, took 

Alflieali(St. ' ° •^' 

Aiphege), up the body of the murdered Alfheah, and bore it ten- 

1023. j~ *j 1 

derly from St. Paul's to South wark, and thence by regu- 
lar stages in solemn procession, through Rochester to Canterbury. 
The proceedings, which took eleven days, appealed powerfully to the 
national sentiment of the English, nor could the nation fail to 
regard the honor done to their martyred primate as the peace offer- 
ing of their foreign king. The retirement, possibly outlawry of 
Thurkill, whom popular opinion, riglitly or wrongly, made respon- 
sible for the murder of Alfheah, we may also associate with the 
translation of the Saint's bones to their last resting place. 

In 1025 Canute again returned to Denmark. It was during 
this second absence that he made his memorable visit to Rome, 

which he so timed as to be present at the Imperial 
Jta?y%27 coronation of Conrad II. The compliment which he 

thus paid to the new emperor was amply rewarded by a 
grant of privileges of prime importance to Canute and his people; 
not least of which was the abolition of the heavy tolls which it was 
customary to exact of English pilgrims as they passed through 
Burgundy or Switzerland on the way to Italy. They were moreover 
to be protected by more equitable laws while passing through the 
other dominions of the Emperor. The pope also agreed not to 
iStubbs, S. C, p. 75. 



120 DECLINE OF THE KINGDOM [canute 

demand the ruinous sums wliicli it had been customary to exact of 
the English archbishops in return for the pall. 

The next year Canute took advantage of a quarrel of his old 
friend Olaf the Holy of Norway with his people, and landed with a 
Canute adds f'^^c® ^f fifty ships, and drove Olaf out of the country. 
M^domin- Canute then added Norway to his cluster of kingdoms. 
iom,io2s. Two years later Olaf attempted to regain his crown, 
but was defeated at Stiklestad and perished, probably in the 
"battle. 

After the overthrow of Olaf Canute returned to England, the 
undisputed lord of the north. In the days of England's weakness, 
the Scots had steadily encroached on the Northumbrian 
iMtMm^ border, and in the second year of Canute's reign the 
Scottish king Malcolm had defeated the northern earl at 
Carham and taken possession of the country between Forth and 
Tweed. Canute did not seek to regain this region, but prepared 
to compel Malcolm to recognize the overlordship of the king of 
England, a cnstom which had been abandoned since the days of 
Edgar. Malcolm promptly yielded; and the country north of the 
Tweed, Lothian, passed jiermanently into Scottish hands and soon 
became the dominant influence in the northern kingdom. The 
later kings made Edinburgh their capital, and here, surrounded 
by an English population, they, who heretofore had been lords only 
of rude Celtic tribes, soon became more English in speech and 
thought than the kings of strange blood who ruled England. 

In 1035 the long and peaceful reign of Canute came to an end. 
He was not a great conqueror; it can not be said that he proved 
himself a master of the art of war. Yet, as a states- 
Va^nute's man, as a master in building up empires by the arts of 
peace, he has had few equals. English towns hitherto 
have played only a subordinate part in English history. They 
have been conspicuous at all only as fortresses. But with Canute's 
reign the English town enters upon a new era. The union of 
England, Denmark, and Norway, the end of the viking era, and 
the new peace and security which settled on the northern seas, 
greatly stimulated mercantile adventure. The pure English stock 
were not quick to see the new opportunity which opened before 



1018] CHARACTER 01? CANUTE 121 

them, but the Danish population, with that readiness of the Danes 
of adapting themselves to novel surroundings so characteristic of 
the race, entered at once into a new commercial activity. York 
rose rapidly into a mart of considerable importance, and began to 
be a very respectable competitor of Loudon for the northern 
trade. Oxford, Chester, and Bristol also became centers of 
prominence. 

Canute was a man of no vices and few weaknesses. He had 
an ungovernable temper which when aroused rushed him head- 
long into deeds of violence, only to leave him in tears 
c^n^lf^^'^'^ of real penitence when the storm had subsided; yet too 
often the repentance came over late to make amends to 
the victim of his wrath. His father, Sweyn, in one of his 
oarlier wanderings, seems to have embraced Christianity, but his 
faith was that of a barbarian; he thought that in adopting the 
cross he was securing the favor of some extra wonder-working 
charm to help him in his piracies. Canute's training therefore 
could hardly be called Christian; yet as soon as he came under 
the direct influence of English teachers he readily yielded to 
their guidance and displayed a most commendable desire to profit 
by the new precepts so strange to his own people. The letter 
which he sent home from Eome reveals "the noble conception" 
of his kingly duties which had been born of these new influences 
and goes far to explain the devotion of his later life so marked in 
contrast with the brutalities of the earlier period. He wrote: "I 
have vowed to God to lead a right life in all things; to rule 
Justly and piously my realms and subjects, and to administer just 
judgment to all. If heretofore I have done aught beyond what 
was just, through headiness or negligence of youth, I am ready 
with God's help to amend it utterly." He warns his officers 
against oppressing his people in his name: "I have no need that 
money be heaped together for me by unjust demands." "Never,'- 
he concludes, "have I spared, nor will I spare, to spend myself 
and my toil in what is needful and good for my people." 

It was in keeping with the spirit of this letter that Canute had 
dismissed the army of invasion in 1018, and filled the prominent 
places of trust and power about him with Englishmen. And yet 



122 DECLINE OF THE KINGDOM [canutb 

he dared not trust the old fyrd altogether, not perhaps because the 
men who composed it were English, but because it was a fyrd, 
slow to action, unwieldy, and uncertain. With his 
nmtse-caru P^^ctical seuse, therefore, he retained at immediate call 
a small standing army, composed of picked troops, 
well paid and well armed, the famous Iwuse-carls — in number 
not exceeding six thousand men, possibly not even three thousand. 
These troops were maintained by a yearly levy of Danegeld, The 
institution survived the death of Canute, to be finally swept 
away in the rout of Hastings. The Norman and Angevin kings 
did not replace the house-carls, although mercenaries were used at 
various times. The idea of a standing army has never been popu- 
lar with the English; it has been tolerated at all only since the 
expanding colonial possessions of England have made it a 
necessity. 

The laws of Canute added nothing to existing English institu- 
tions. The "shire-gemot" was to be held regularly twice a year, 
and the "burh-gemot" thrice a year. The lower 
Canute''^ '^^ courts Were protected in their rights. Appeals were to 
be recognized only in default of justice. Every freeman 
must "be brought into a hundred and into a tithing," institutions 
which had now absorbed the gild in the completed territorial 
organization of the kingdom. The king's stewards were not to 
oppress the king's tenants, or take from them their goods unjustly. 
The herioi, the custom by which the lord was allowed to seize the 
chattels of a deceased tenant, was fixed by rule; henceforth only 
a certain value could be taken, prescribed in accordance with the 
rank of the tenant from the earl down. Canute favored the land- 
lords by greatly increasing the number of private juris- 
Sac and dictions, sac and soc, which had become only too 
common in the unsettled days of Ethelred; a dangerous 
precedent, and yet one which was entirely in keeping with Canute's 
policy of enlisting the conservative elements of English society in 
the service of the state. 

Canute's "elaborate humility toward all things connected with 
the church and clergy" is not in accordance with modern ideas; 
yet it must be borne in mind that the church was the one power- 



1035-1040] HAROLD HAREFOOT 123 

fully organized social influence of the times, the hearty coopera- 
tion of which was absolutely necessary in maintaining the peace 
Cmmteand '^^ich the king SO dearly loved. It was the church 
the church, j^gt as Alfred regarded it, the instrument of education, 
the disseminator of knowledge, but the church, the instrument of 
law and order. 

Upon the death of Canute his three kingdoms drifted apart. 
Emma had borne him one son, Hardicanute. But he left also two 
other sons, the children of an English woman, Elgiva, 
Harold borne to him in that loose union always too common 

among sovereigns of Teutonic blood. Of these Sweyn, 
the elder son, retained Norway, but was soon after dispossessed by 
Magnus, the son of Olaf the Holy. Canute apparently designed 
England for Hardicanute, but at the time of his death Hardi- 
canute was in Denmark, and Harold, known on account of his 
physical activity as Harefoot, the second son of Elgiva, attempted 
to seize the kingdom. But Godwin, the Earl of the West Saxons, 
refused to acknowledge Harold and held Wessex for Hardicanute. 

So matters stood in England when Alfred, the eldest of Emma's 
sons by her first marriage, in an ill-advised moment landed in 
Kent in the hope of rallying the English to his support. But 
Ethelred's name roused no enthusiasm among the people, and 
possibly by the knavery of Godwin, Alfred was seized and turned 
over to Harold, wlio straightway put out the lad's eyes and sent 
him to Ely to die of his wounds. By this treachery Godwin 
seems to have marie his peace with Harold. 

Harold was not a strong character like Canute; yet he was not 
a bad prince. The murder of Alfred was, according to the ideas 
of the times, no worse than several similar crimes laid to his 
father. The worst that is told against him is that he neglected 
Christian rites and would go hunting on Sundays. 

Harold died at Oxford after a reign of five years. His death 

probably saved England from civil war; for Hardicanute, having 

come to an understanding with Magnus, was already 
Beam of , . ^ ^ -rn , -, A PI 

Harold, contemplatmg a descent upon England. A powerful 

party, moreover, with Godwin at their head, had never 

given up the idea of securing the crown for Emma's Danish son. 



124 DECLINE OF THE KINGDOM [hardicanuie 

When therefore it was known that Harold was dead, the witan 
at once sent an invitation to Hardicannte to come and take the 
crown. 

The first act of the new king betrayed how little of his father's 
wisdom or greatness of soul he had inherited. He ordered his 

brother's body to be thrown out into the marshes of the 
Haraicamite Thames. His next step was to levy a Danegeld in 

order to pay the men whom he had brought with him 
from Denmark. The winter of 1040 was a severe one, and the 
people paid the tax with great difficulty. Other levies followed, 
and then the people refused to pay altogether. The earls and 
sheriffs could do nothing. Hardicanute committed the collection 
of the tax to his house-carls. Eiots followed. Blood was shed 
at Worcester. Hardicanute called out the fyrd against the con- 
tumacious city, and the great earls, Godwin of Wessex, Si vizard of 
Northumbria, and Leofric of Mercia,^ gathered their men at his 
bidding, and for four days harried the shire and finally destroyed 
the town. 

At last after two years of such a reign as only such a man 
could give, Hardicanute died "as he stood at his drink." He had 

proved himself from the first a despicable tyrant. The 

English hailed his death as a fortunate relief from a bad 
bargain, and turned with no feigned joy to greet as king the mild 
and pacific Edward, the surviving son of Emma and Ethelred. 

^The wife of this Leofric was Godgifu, the "Lady Godiva" famous 
in the legends of Coventry. 



PART II— FEUDAL ENGLAND 
THE ERA OF NATIONAL ORGANIZATION 

FROM 1043 TO 1297 



CHAPTER I 



THE SHADOW OF THE NORMAN" 

EDWARD THE CONFESSOR, 1042-lOGG 
HAROLD. 1066, JAN. 6— OCT. 14 

THE DUKES OF NOEMANDY. EARLY CONNECTION WITH THE 
ENGLISH LINE 

Rolf the Walker, 912-027 

William Longsword, 927-943 

I 
Richard I. the Fearless, 943-996 

\ 

Richard II. the Good, 996-1006 Emma = \ ^ Canute'*^ 

Richard III., 1026-1028 Robert the Devil, 1028-1035 

William the Conqueror, 

from 1035 Duke of Normandy, from 
1066 King of England. Died 1087 

The reign of Edward the Confessor may be regarded as a 
preparation for the Norman Conquest. The establishment of a 

powerful Scandinavian state on the southern shore of 
shadmvupon the Channel must have exerted a direct influence upon 
r^gn^^'^ England sooner or later. For a time, however, the 

troubled sea of Neustrian politics, the opportunities 
of expansion south and west, fully occupied the attention of 
the pirate chieftains or dukes who succeeded Rolf, the founder 
of the Norman Duchy. But the marriage of Duke Richard II. 's 
sister to two kings of England in succession, the migration 
of many of her people thither, the long residence of Ethelred's 
exiled sons at the Norman court, and the numerous and lasting 
friendships made by Edward among his mother's Norman friends, 
quickened the interest of duke and people in the neighboring king- 

125 



126 THE SHADOW OF THE NORMAN [edward the Confessor 

dom. The spirit of intermeddling and mischief-making, more- 
over, was as strong as ever at the court of these be-Frenched 
descendants of the old sea-kings, and it required only some fancied 
grievance, some opportunity of disputing the English succession, 
to bring a new viking expedition from Normandy, more formidable 
than any which had ever sailed from Norway or Denmark. This 
is the shadow which, during the twenty-four years of Edward's 
reign, is ever deepening, ever creeping upon England from the 
south. 

Edward was peculiarly unfitted for the task which he was 
called upon to perform. He was born of an English father, whose 
personality could never have been to him more than one 
Edwardfor of the shadowy traditions of childhood. He was 
his task. brought up in the home of his JSTormau mother, where 

his father's speech was heard only as a foreign tongue; where he 
was tutored by French priests, and where all his thought was 
shaped by men who despised and disparaged his father's people as 
a nation of half-civilized boors and rustics. At forty he was 
called home to rule over this impossible people. What wonder 
that he could never understand them ; that his native land was to 
him always a weary land of exile and that he clung with pathetic 
tenacity to the Norman friends of his youth. Edward, more- 
over, was the kind of man to spend his life in leading strings. 
Although capable of a certain kind of fitful energy, he possessed 
no power of independent action, and allowed himself to be pulled 
about by the rival elements ever at quarrel in his court. In all 
this turmoil, the poor king, long remembered for his thin figure, 
"his delicate complexion," his slender womanly hands, and his 
deep devotional nature, was unable to gather to himself any per- 
sonal following in the nation, or to exert any direct influence upon 
its thought or its ideals. Yet no king ever took his kingly office 
more seriously, or tried harder to rule as a king should. But 
Edward's delicate hands were unfitted for such rough work, and 
at last, weary in body and sick of soul, he threw down the tangled 
skein, and left it for stronger hands to unravel. History presents 
no sadder tragedy than this, when for the mere accident of birth, 
it thrusts such a man as Edward the Confessor or Henry, sixth 



1042] EAKL GODWIiS' 127 

of the name, into a position where his very goodness defeats 
him. Meekness was the one quality for which the medieval king 
had little need. 

When Edward assumed the crown, the one great man of the 
kingdom was Godwin, Earl of "Wessex. Leofric of Mercia, or 

Si ward of Northumbria, might rival him in rank; 
EaiT(^' b^^t in actual influence and solid ability, Godwin was 
Ttessex. vvithoiit a peer. His eldest son, Sweyn was already 

earl of the western shires of Wessex. In 1045 his second son, 
Harold, was raised to the earldom of East Anglia, to which were 
also added Huntingdon, Cambridge, and Essex; and the same 
year his daughter Edith became the wife of Edward. 

The advance of this powerful family, in the ordinary course of 
things, must have caused much jealousy and suspicion on the part 

of Edward's other English subjects. But the Norman 
Godmin^^^ '^ sympathies of the king had been from the first so pro- 
vopuianty. j^Quuced, his favoritism for one man in particular, 
Robert of Jumieges, so conspicuous, that the English apparently 
looked with complacence upon these evidences of the growing 
strength of the Earl of Wessex, seeing in him a possible foil to the 
Norman influence which surrounded the king. The confidence of 
the people, however, received a severe shock when a few months 

after the marriage of Edith, Earl Sweyn carried off the 
E^risw^'^^ Abbess of Leominster and proposed to make her his 

wife. The crime was a very serious one in the eyes of 
a churchly age ; yet Godwin with cool indifference to public sen- 
timent, attempted to use his influence to shelter his wayward son. 
Nevertheless, the young man was outlawed and forced for two 
years to seek exile in the courts of Flanders and Denmark. The 
father's influence, however, finally prevailed over the sensitive 
conscience of Edward, and Sweyn was recalled ; but only to add 
another to his list of crimes by treacherously murdering his 
cousin Beorn, who had been given a part of Sweyn's earldom dur- 
ing his exile. The new crime raised a storm of indignation, and 
Sweyn was compelled a second time to flee for his life. The king 
publicly proclaimed him "nithing" — "the deepest term of oppro- 
brium known to English law." But Godwin still clung to his first- 



128 THE SHADOW OF THE NORMAN [edward the Confbssok 

born, and not only secured a second inlawing, but persuaded the 
gentle king to restore again the forfeited earldom, which had 
remained vacant since the death of Beorn. 

The persistent fidelity of Godwin to Sweyn had not only shaken 
the confidence of the English in Godwin as a leader, but had also 
Growth of compelled him to make serious sacrifices to the Norman 
natfmai'^^ or court party in order to purchase their support in 
party. i\^q witenagemot. The earldom of Hereford which 

had been recently added to Harold's possessions, was given to 
Ealph, the king's Norman nephew; the vacant see of Dorchester 
was given to one of the king's Norman priests, Ulf, who "did 
nanght bishoplike," and of whom none had aught good to say; 
and most important of all, upon the death of Arch- 
bishop Edsige, Eobert of Jumieges, who held the 
approaches of the king's ear as no other man in the kingdom, was 
advanced to the important see of Canterbury. But reaction had 
already set in, and Godwin was in a position to protest against 
this last act of favoritism. The king however insisted, and Eob- 
ert departed for Eome to secure the pall. Yet something was 
gained, for the king consented to the appointment to the see of 
London of Spearhafoc, an Englishman; but when Eobert returned, 
he refused to consecrate Spearhafoc and appointed William, one 
of the king's Norman chaplains, in his stead. Kynsige, an Eng- 
lishman, but also of the royal chapel, had been recently made 
primate of York. 

The English or national party was now thoroughly awakened, 
and their disapj^roval of the king's partiality for his Norman 
Thcairnirof fi'i^nds was becoming every day more outspoken. This 
Bimh''']u^at ^mfortunate moment, Eustace of Boulogne, who had 
Dover, 1U51. married a sister of the king, seized for a visit to the 
English court. Eustace, who was by nature a firebrand and as 
void of tact and judgment as of self-control, was not the man to 
increase the popularity of foreigners among the English. The 
crisis came when on his way home he managed to get into a brawl 
with the people of Dover, in which Eustace was beaten off after a 
pitched battle and several of his men slain. Eustace rode straight 
to the king and made his complaint, and Edward without furthor 



1051J GODWIlSr AN OUTLAW 129 

inquiry ordered Godwin, as Earl of Wessex, to destroy the city 
which had treated his guest so sliabbily. 

Godwin was too good a politican not to see his opportunity and 
seize it. He flatly refused to march against his own people at the 
complaint of a foreigner. The king, vexed and angry, 
pie issue determined to appeal to the witan, who had been sum- 
Godwin '^^^'^ moned to meet at Gloucester on September 1. God- 
win, putting himself squarely on the issue, whether 
England should be governed by foreigners or Englishmen, appealed 
to his people, and with Sweyn and Harold to support him 
marched to Gloucester under arms. The northern earls, Leofric 
and Siward, with Ralph of Hereford, also gathered their followers 
and advanced to Gloucester. 

The realm trembled on the brink of civil war; a taunt, a blow, 

the spilling of blood, never so little, and no man could tell what, or 

where the end would be. Edward was saved from the 

Godwin and crisis by the judicious advice of Leofric, who proposed 

his sons. . 1 I -r ^ tjij_' 

that the witan adjourn to meet at London and that m 
the interim both parties disband their forces. When the time for 
the meeting came, however, Godwin and the king were as far apart 
as ever; but Godwin's supporters, yielding to soberer second 
thought, were by no means as ready for war as they had been at 
Gloucester. When, therefore, the king refused to guarantee the 
safety of Godwin and his sons, should they present themselves at 
the witenagemot, Godwin saw that he was beaten and that noth- 
ing was left for him but flight. The sentence of outlawry was 
immediately passed as a matter of course. Even the Lady Edith 
was not beyond the malice of the court party and Archbishop 
Robert proposed that Edward complete the overthrow of Godwin 
by securing a divorce against the daughter. To the honor of 
Edward be it said, he refused to comply with the suggestion, and 
contented himself with sending Edith to a convent at Wilton, 
where she had been educated and where she was among friends. 

The foreign party were for the time supreme in the councils of 
the king, and it was doubtless with a dii;ect view of perpetuating their 
power, that they began to turn the attention of Edward to his 
kinsman, Duke William of Normandy, as a possible successor. 



130 THE SHADOW OF THE NORMAN", [edward the Confessor 

This man whose shadow now for the first time falls across the 
path of English history, deserves more than a passing notice. His 
father v/as Duke Robert, younger son to that Duke Eich- 
Normmdv ^^^^ ^^^ Good, who sent his sister Emma as a peace 
offeriug to Ethelred. For some reason or other, he had 
won the ugly sobriquet of Robert the Devil. But the devil in Robert 
seems to have been a harmless, good-natured sort of devil. 
Though wild, impetuous, and inconstant, and although doing 
many things in his later years that made churchmen stare, to his 
people he was always "courteous, joyous, debonaire, and benign." 
lie abounded in noble deeds and loved to startle his miserly con- 
temporaries by the reckless magnificence of his charities. 

The mother of William was Arlette, the daughter of a tanner 
of Ealaise, the sight of whose fair feet had captured the impetuous 
„, . , Robert's heart, as she stood in the brook which ran 
*-^ii\^-,?f , under her father's tannery and washed the family linen. 
birth. Robert, however, had never honored Arlette by making 

her his wife, and the neglect all but cost the son his duchy. The 
proud nobles of Normandy were not such sticklers for the canon 
law, but they could not forget the stench of the tanner's hides, 
nor forgive Robert for linking their proud ducal line with the most 
detested of medieval trades. Even while Robert lived, there were 
fierce mutterings against the tanner's grandson, and when the 
report was brought back of Robert's death on his fan- 
tastical pilgrimage to the Holy Land, the storm broke 
against the harmless little lad of ten. For ten years the life 
of the boy duke was preserved only by the constant watchfulness 
of his guardians, who kept him behind stone walls like a prisoner. 
In 1037 his asylum, the powerful castle of Vaudreuil, was surprised, 
andOsborn, his kinsman, stabbed as he lay in bed by the boy's side. 
It was in such turmoil as this, with the terrors of that awful 
night at Vaudreuil indelibly stamped upon his young mind, with 
the misfortune of his birth constantly flung in his teeth, 
iiiKifriuiiing that the character of the young prince was formed. 
From his mother he inherited the sturdy limbs and 
physical strength of the peasant; from his father, the restless 
energy, the latent fire of the viking race. When he reached man's 



105l] WILLIAM OF JSrORMA]S"DY 131 

estate, his towering form, just short of the gigantic, surmounted 
by mighty shoulders, made him conspicuous among men famous 
for their commanding presence. No man in his army, it was said, 
could bend William's bow save William himself. Enormous 
physical strength, ever under conscious control, was naturally 
accompanied by great personal courage; "there was never beast 
nor man" whom he feared. Surrounded from childhood by 
appalling dangers, compelled to face difficulties which would have 
crushed other men, the powerful mind matured rapidly with the 
powerful body. As a boy, he was marked for discretion and 
sagacity far beyond his years. As a man, he became taciturn and 
self-reliant, but quick to accept the good counsel of others. A 
thorough master of himself in an age of lawlessness and license, 
he knew the secret of controlling others. A born ruler of men 
was this William, a drillmaster by endowment and by training. 
A child of ten, he had been left with a tainted name and defied by 
the most turbulent baronage of Europe, whose castles, in contempt 
of law, dotted every hillside, a constant menace to duke or peasant. 
Yet, at twenty, this boy duke had crushed his enemies, recon- 
quered and reorganized his duchy, extended its boundaries, and 
secured again its old commanding place among the states of the 
Capetian confederation. But in the long and bitter struggle, 
AVilliam had hardened to the sufferings of others ; Caligula could 
not be more cruel, nor Attila more violent, when the wrath of 
him was once aroused. He was as pitiless as a thunderbolt; 
where he struck, he blasted ; nor did the humbleness of the victim 
appeal to his mercy. He was "the great and terrible duke"; in 
his presence strong men trembled and women fainted. 

This was the man to whom the Norman party in England now 
looked for the permanent establishment of their power; and as 

the first step to that end, arranged for a visit by the 
William to ^'•^^^ *° ^^^® English court. The object of the mission 
England, ^^s kept a profound secret at the time, but in the light 

of passing events, it can hardly be doubted that Wil- 
liam was invited over by Archbishop Eobert and other leaders of 
the Norman party, with the express purpose of securing from 
Edward some recognition of William as his heir; and that, if 



132 THE SHADOW OF THE NORMAN [ Edward the Conkessob 

Edward did not commit himself then, he did soon after William's 
return to Normandy, and sent Eobertto the court of Rouen to 
announce the decision to William. 

If this were the plan of the Norman party, they had evidently 
overreached themselves. A powerful reaction set in once more 

against the Norman policy of the court, and when the 
Godwin, next year, Godwin and his sons returned at the head of 

a fleet, the king conscious of the disaffection of his 
people, was compelled to allow the Norman favorites whom he 
could no longer protect, to seek safety in flight, and himself sub- 
mit to the restoration of Godwin and his family. The triumph of 
Godwin was as complete as the use which he sought to make of his 
victory was wise and moderate. "Good laws" were pledged, and 
the sentence of outlawry turned upon Robert and Ulf and all 
"who had brought evil counsels into the land." Stigand, the 
English bishop of Winchester, was advanced to Robert's see of 
Canterbury, and Wulfwi, another supporter of Godwin, was 
appointed to Dorchester. But William of London, who was a very 
different man from either Robert or Ulf, was allowed to return to 
his bishopric, and since Sweyn was now dead, Ralph, the king's 
nephew, was also left in possession of his earldom. 

After the return of Godwin, Edward yielded himself to the 
control of the English party. The old earl, however, did not long 
survive to enjoy his triumph. He had come up to Winchester to 
keep the Easter feast with the king, and on Monday while they 

sat at meat together, the earl suddenly sank down, 
Death of probably in an apoplectic fit ; he was borne from the 
April 15. 1053. room speechless and helpless, and "laid in the king's 

bower," where he expired three days later. Godwin 
was altogether a remarkable character. He had risen like Dun- 
stan, if not from humble life, at least from the obscurity of the 
lower ranks of the nobility, and had maintained himself at the 
head of the witan through three successive reigns. His patriotism 
is not above suspicion of self-seeking ; but what statesman of the 
age, or churchman either, is not open to the same charge? 
Politically the support of Sweyn was a serious blunder; but even 
Simon de Montfort committed a similar error, and paid a far more 



1053-1057] THE SONS OF GODWIK 133 

serious penalty. On the other hand, Godwin seems to have 
comprehended the full import of the growing influence of Nor- 
mandy upon English affairs, and sought to offset it by an alliance 
with Germany and Flanders, the earliest hint of the later estab- 
lished policy of English statesmen. His connection with the 
murder of Alfred the Etheling/ is a dark shadow upon his life 
which the modern historian with all his ingenuity can with 
difficulty dispel. In opposing Edward when in a moment 
of anger the king called for the destruction of Dover, Godwin 
was certainly right, and in his final triumph he appears as the 
forerunner of those English statesmen of a later day who know 
how to overawe kings and protect the people from their 
tyranny. 

The English party suffered no diminution of power in conse- 
quence of the death of Godwin. Harold, his second son, whose 

gracious ways and forgiving temper had already won 
strmcithaf ^^® affections of the people, succeeded to the earldom of 
theEngiish Wcsscx and to all the old earl's influence among the 

witan. Gyrth, the fourth son, was advanced to Harold's 
earldom of East Anglia, while Essex and the adjoining counties 
were given to Leofwin, a fifth son. In 1055 Siward of ISTorth- 
umbria died and his son, Waltheof, who was a mere lad, was set 
aside to make room for Tostig, the third son of Godwin. With 
the members of this powerful family thus entrenched in the great 
earldoms, and with such Englishmen as Stigand holding the high 
places of the church, the English party had little to fear save 
from the event of a disputed succession. Here, however, was a 
real and serious danger. It was now generally accepted that 
Edward would remain childless, and in consequence of the numer- 
ous recent violations of the right of hereditary succession, no man 
knew what claims might be advanced to the vacant throne. It 

was therefore determined by the witan to send for 
death of Edward, the surviving son of Edmund Ironside, who 
Etheiing, had grown to man's estate in exile in Hungary, whither 

he had been sent by the king of Sweden, and where he 

1 For the legend which connects his death with the murder of Alfred, 
see Ramsey, I, p. 468. 



134 THE SHADOW OF THE ISTORMAN [harold 

had married a kinswoman of Henry II. of Germany. With his 
three children, Edgar, Margaret, and Christina, the Etheling 
now returned to England as the recognized heir of Edward the 
Confessor. But the unfortunate prince had hardly reached 
England when he suddenly sickened and died, leaving the 
little lad Edgar as the sole male representative of the line of 
Alfred. 

If therefore Edward the Confessor had ever seriously enter- 
tained the plan of a Norman succession, he had evidently aban- 
doned- it ; but not so the man who was to have been the 
Harold's chief agent in carrying it out. In 1064 Harold was 

oath, 1064. & J to 

shipwrecked on the Norman coast and ultimately fell 
into William's power. The duke was quick to take advantage of 
his good fortune, and virtually forced his unwilling guest to take 
an oath to support his candidacy for the English throne; William 
on his part, pledging one of his daughters to the captive earl in 
marriage. This oath of Harold was to have the gravest political 
consequences, since the subsequent violation of it, secured as 
it was by the most solemn sanctions which were known to the 
eleventh century, necessarily embroiled Harold with the church 
and roused a public sentiment in Europe in William's favor. 

Upon his return, however, Harold did not for one moment 
conduct himself as though he regarded the oath of any importance. 

Even Edward seemed to have forgotten William, and 
into the after the death of Edward Etheling, turned his 

Site CCS S'iOTh 

thoughts for a moment upon the lad Edgar. But 
Edgar was poor, a child in years and experience, and without any 
definite following. If Harold and the great house of Godwin 
should support him, his claim might be made good; but Harold 
now had ambitions of his own. He was, moreover, completely in 
the king's confidence, and was quietly drifting into the place of 
„ J, greatest power. Those who were in Harold's counsels, 

crowned,^ therefore, were not surprised when it was reported that 
1066. the good king with his last breath had named the 

powerful earl as his successor. Edward died on the 5th of Jan- 
uary, 1066, and the next day, the 6th, the witan who were 
present in London, met quietly, and elected and crowned Harold, 



1066] WILLIAM'S APPEAL TO EUKOPE 135 

Strange to say, however, William did not seem to know what 

had been doing at Westminster. The oath of 1064 had thoroughly 

deceived him, and when he received the report of 

WilUam TTITI •! -I T^ Tl 

jweparcsfor Harold s coronation, he acted like one unnerved by news 
war, 

of sudden calamity. His first act was to dispatch a 

messenger to Harold to protest against his perfidy and demand the 

fulfillment of the oath. At Lillebonne he assembled his Norman 

nobles, the heads of the great houses of Beaumont, 

The 

cinuiciiof Montgomery, Fitz-Osbern, and Mortimer, names then 

Lillebonne. ° V, ^ . , ' , . 

strange to English ears, and by appealing to the old 
viking love of plunder which was by no means dead in the race, 
persuaded the assembly to support him in an armed protest against 
the alleged usurpation of Harold. 

To Europe William submitted his case against Harold 
The appeal under the following counts: 

40 Europe. o 

1. The alleged bequest of his cousin Edward from 
which Harold had defrauded him. 

2. The perjury of Harold, which was a crime against the 
church. 

3. The expulsion of the Normans from England in 1052 at 
the instigation of Godwin and his sons. 

4. The massacre of the Danes by Ethelred on St. Brice's Day, 
1002. 

That William should take such pains to secure the moral sup- 
port of Europe shows that public sentiment was already a recog- 
nized element in international politics. 

In winning the pope, Alexander II., William found no diffi- 
culty. The outlawry of Eobert of Jumieges and the election of 
Stigand had already brought the English witan into 

Attitude * . -, , r- ^ 

of Pope open conflict with the Eoman Curia, which had refused 

' to recognize their right to depose an archbishop. And 
when Stigand sought to secure from the anti-pope, Benedict IX., 
the recognition which the canonical popes denied him, he had 
made the breach irreparable. When therefore William laid his 
case before the pope, the papal tribunal was already prejudiced in 
his favor and not only declared Harold guilty of perjury and 
justified William in taking up arms, but went farther and gave the 



136 THE SHA.DOW OF THE NORMAN" [harold 

expedition almost a semi -religious character by sending to the duke 
the consecrated banner of St. Peter, together with a sacred relic 
of the Apostle himself, to lead the invading host. 

To win the pope was also to win the council that at that time 

controlled the boy emperor, Henry IV. ; and although Germany 

had been the ally of Godwin, the vassals of the empire 

Attitude of ;' , t , -, ,, , r. ^^ 

the Imperial were encouraged to enlist under the banner of JNor- 

couvt 

mandy. A pledge was further given to William to j)rotect 
his duchy from attack during his absence; so fatal and far-reach- 
ing was the hostility of the church to the party who had outlawed 
Robert, elected Stigand, and supported the perjury of Harold. 

At the court of the French king, Philip I., William met with 
some opposition. It required no deep political insight to discern 

a menace to the future interests of the French crown in 

Attitude of T r. 1 TA 1 P -KT 

the French the proposal of the Duke of JSormandy, already over- 
powerful for a vassal, to add to his Norman posses- 
sions the kingdom of England. Yet William was not without 
powerful friends at the French court. Philip, like Henry IV., 
was a minor, and at the head of the regency was the Count of 
Flanders, William's father-in-law. While, therefore, the regency 
openly commanded William to abandon his enterprise, secretly the 
Count of Flanders favored it and encouraged his own vassals 
to join William. Anjou also, the hereditary foe of Normandy, 
strange to say, was for the time arrayed on the side of William. 
Another ancient foe, Conan of Brittany, was removed by death, 
just at the moment when he was meditating mischief, and his suc- 
cessor, Hoel, at once sent five thousand Bretons under his own son 
to fight for William. 

But if fortune thus smiled strangely upon William, it as con- 
spicuously frowned upon Harold. First he had to face the defec- 
tion of his brother Tostig, who in the later days of 
Tolti^'^''"^'^ Edward had been driven out of Northumbria by his 
own people; but holding Harold responsible for his 
troubles he had retired to the home of his wife's father, the old 
Count of Flanders, the father-in-law of William, where he nursed 
his resentment and waited for the moment of revenge. When 
tidings of the events of January reached him, he hastened to 



1066] THE WATCH BY THE CHANNEL 137 

Roiieii, to offer his sword to his brother-in-law against his brother. 
His impatience, however, would not allow him to await the slow 
gathering of the greater armament, and the early spring saw him 
at the head of a band of Norman and Flemish mercenaries, harry- 
ing the coasts of Sussex and Kent. Harold attempted to intercept 
Tostig and his pirates, but Tostig eluded him and entering the 
North Sea passed up the English coast to the Humber, where he 
fell foul of the northern earls and was driven out to sea again. 
His further movements during this eventful summer are traced 
with difficulty. Apparently, after various unsuccessful efforts to 
rouse first Malcolm of Scotland and then Sweyn of Denmark to sup- 
port William, he finally repaired to the court of Harold Hardrada 
of Norway, and induced him to enter the lists upon his own account 
as a third applicant for the English crown. As the price of his 
support, Tostig was to be restored to his northern earldom. 

In the meanwhile the English Harold, knowing nothing appar- 
ently of this new storm which was gathering in Norway, was 
directing all his attention to the south, where he collected his ships, 
and massed his troops, and waited for William to strike. On the 
opposite coast, sheltered in the mouth of the Dives, there gathered 
at the call of William all the martial strength of northern Europe. 
The expedition had become widely popular with the young nobility, 
and from all the northern feudatories of France and from many 
of the southern as well, the wild adventurous spirits of the day 
"flocked together for the war over the sea," — "an innumerable 
host of horsemen, slingers, archers, and foot soldiers."^ For a 
full month after all was ready, contrary winds kept the impatient 
host waiting in the Dives. But in the end this proved not a 
little to the advantage of William, though a grievous vexation at 
the time. Harold was compelled to keep his fleet in the roads 

during the whole summer. The men of the southern 
Septembers, counties lay out "fyrding," waiting while months 

dragged by and the foe did not come. The enthusiasm ' 
of the first muster ebbed, and when early in September, pro- 



' Upon the number of "William's armament, ships, and men, see Oman's 
History of the Art of War in the Middle Ages, p. 156, 



138 THE SHADOW OF THE NORMAN [hakold 

visions began to fail, Harold was compelled to dismiss the fyrd. 
A week later the fleet also was disbanded. 

The same wind, moreover, which was keeping William and his 

host fretting in the harbors of Normandy, was now in the end of 

September bringing the other Harold with Earl Tostig 

Toltk^and ^^^^ ^^^ their following. Tostig with sixty ships was 

Harold ^^j^g Q^y-^f^ ^q reach the Humber but was again driven 

Hardrada. _ o 

out to sea by the northern earls, and retired to Scot- 
land where he was joined by Harold Hardrada. The allies then 
returned, harrying Ihe coast as they advanced. At Riccal on 
the Humber they disembarked and leaving a strong reserve with 
their ships, marched upon York. Edwin of Mercia, and his 

brother, Morcar, to whom the witan had given Tostig's 
Fttz/ord, Northumbrian earldom, attempted to make a stand at 

Eulford, but their hasty levies were easily beaten and 
compelled to retire behind the walls of the northern capital, leav- 
ing all the country north of the Humber at the mercy of Tostig 
and his allies. 

Harold had been speedily apprised of the serious nature of the 
storm which had burst upon the north, and at once abandoning 

his watch by the Channel, by one of the most remark- 
mm-ch'^ able forced marches on record, was already hastening to 

to Stamford meet Tostig and the other Harold. He must crush 
Bridge. o 

them before the arrival of William, or all would be lost. 
On Sunday, September 24, York capitulated. On the same even- 
ing, Harold and his men were at Tadcaster, hurrying along the old 
Roman road, only a day's march away. The approach of such a 
large body of men along the dusty September roads was probably 
not unknown to the Norwegians at Riccal, whose bands after the 
usual custom were scouring the surrounding country for forage. 
Instead of holding Y^ork, therefore, the leaders ordered up their 
reserves, and attempted to retire beyond the Derwent. But 
Harold, marching his men all night and pressing on through 
York without stopping, overtook them at Stamford Bridge some- 
time in the forenoon of Monday the 25th. The Norwegians 
apparently were in light marching order; many of them, en- 
tirely unarmed. A part had already passed to the east bank of 



1066] STAMPORD BRIDGE 139 

the Derwent; others were in the act of filing across the long 
wooden bridge ; still others in motley groups were sitting or lying 
about the grass, waiting for their turn to advance to the crossing. 
The English under cover of the low sloping hill which shuts 
out the plain of York from the basin of the Derwent, had stolen up 

swiftly and noiselessly. The dust stirred by thousands 
Stamford of rapidly moving feet first betrayed their approach to 
tember'so, the Norwegians in the valley. A party was hastily sent 

to the summit to reconnoiter; and there they beheld 
the advancing host, coming swiftly on, prepared for immediate 
battle, "their shields and arms glistening like ice in the morning 
sun." There was a cry; the galloping of horses; the blare of a 
bull's-horn. Then arose the clamor of men, as the loiterers sprang 
to their arms and the leaders attempted to form the shield wall. 
Those who had already passed the stream turned about and began 
to crowd back again across the bridge. But the gleaming helmets 
and stately forms of the house-carls of Harold were already ris- 
ing above the brow of the hill. A shout, a wild plunge forward, 
and the battle was on. From the first clash of arms, Tostig and 
Harold Hardrada had no chance of victory, little of flight. Yet 
they fought like heroes. First Harold fell and then Tostig. Then 
the half-formed shield wall was carried by the English with a rush, 
and the battle surged up to the bridge head. Here for full thirty 
minutes a gigantic Norwegian, ax in hand, held back the whole 
English army, — a deed worthy of one of Homer's heroes. Then 
another mighty surge forward of the crowd before the bridge, and 
it was won. For a moment, the Norwegians made a stand on the 
further side of the bridge, but only for a moment ; then the host, 
taken at the first unawares, with all the advantage of position 
against them, kingless and leaderless, broke and fled. A wild panic 
followed, and the rout soon passed into an indiscriminate massacre. 

The remnant of the smitten army rallied at Riccal ; for the 
reserve had not come up in time for the battle. With the sea open 

before them, they would be able even yet to make 
Results of the Harold much trouble, should he draw off his forces to 

battle. ' 

the south ; but with the other war cloud still hanging 

over the southern coast, Harold could not wait; his return was 



140 THE SHADOW OP THE NORMAN [harold 

urgent. Instead, therefore, of pushing the remnant of the smit- 
ten army to extremities, he offered the leaders generous terms, and 
soon saw them sail away to their homes. So ended the famous 
northern campaign of Harold. The superhuman endurance of 
the long march, the furious energy of the pursuit, and the com- 
pleteness of the victory, proved that Englishmen had not forgot- 
ten how to fight or their leaders how to lead. 

The battle of Stamford Bridge was fought on the 25th of Sep- 
tember. Two days later the moment came for which William 

and his barons had been so long waiting. As the sun 
ut%-ma^ went down on the 27th, the great flagship, the gift of 
Ve^temhirly ^^^ ^^'^^^ Matilda, with its crimson sails spread to the 

freshening breeze, steered out into the channel. In 
the morning the fleet with only two ships missing, which had been 
sunk probably in some nocturnal combat with the scouts of the 
enemy, came to anchor ofi: the Pevensey coast, and by nine o'clock 
the disembarkation had begun. 

William now found himself safely landed, but face to face with 
a hostile country. He knew Harold well ; knew his energy and 

his skill. He knew also that Harold would not yield 

D'iificult'ics 0^ 

William's ' without a battle. But when and where? A sjDeedy 
victory, a great crushing blow which would shatter 
Harold's power must be delivered at once. With his army to 
maintain in a hostile country, delay would be as serious as defeat. 
The 28th was spent by the Normans in the disembarkation; 
then in true viking style, they drew their ships up on the beach, 
and leaving them under a sufficient guard, the main 
to^Hastifys^ body moved along the shore to Hastings. William evi- 
dently had not heard of the landing of Tostig and 
Harold Hardrada; nor of the absence of King Harold. Instead 
therefore of marching directly upon London, he began carefully 
to fortify Hastings, digging a trench and constructing a mound 
and wooden fort. He then undertook a systematic wasting of 
the country, with the evident purpose of compelling Harold to 
come forward and fight him in this strong position. So thor- 
oughly was this work done, that when twenty years later, the 
great Domesday Survey was made, traces of the havoc of Wil- 



1066] EETUKN OF HAROLD 141 

liam's men might still be seen. Woeful days were these for the 
people of Sussex. Village and cottage, hayrick and granary, the 
harvests of the summer just ended, went up in flame and smoke. 
Only the churches and the churchyards were spared. 

It is not so easy to follow the movements of Harold during 
these two weeks. That he could not return at once to London is 
evident. If the forced march and the hard fighting of 
fibroid "■^ Monday had not thoroughly exhausted his men, the vic- 
tory certainly must have disorganized his army for the 
time. In medieval warfare the one conspicuous lack of an army, 
first and last, was discipline. A victory was almost as disastrous 
as a defeat. Harold therefore was still in the north when news 
was brought liim of the landing of William ; ^ nor could he reach 
London much before October 5, and even then he must have pre- 
ceded his army, which was made up mostly of infantry. William 
on the other hand, apparently at the same moment heard of 
the landing of the Norwegians, the overthrow at Stamford 
Bridge, the arrival of Harold in London, and the swift approach 
of the victorious army which was following him from the north. 
William's first news, therefore, could not have been assuring, and 
prudence bade him still linger behind his trenches at Hastings. 

Harold in the meanwhile was gathering the southern levies and 

preparing a second time to hurl himself upon his foes. His 

counsellors, headed by his brother Gyrth, advised delay. 

The advance "^ ^ 

tothehiiiof 1 hey proposed to devastate the country about William 
so that neither man nor beast could live, and thus com- 
pel him either to surrender or retire. It was the counsel of a gen- 
eral. The reply of Harold was the reply of a king. He would not 
burn a single English village nor harm a single English home; he 
had been set to protect his people, not to destroy them.^ Within 
a week Harold was ready, and by October 12 at the latest he 
marched out of London and took the great southern road which 
led away to Hastings. On Friday the 13th, probably toward the 
end of the afternoon, he reached the fatal hill which has since been 

1 Probably about October 1. According to Freeman's estimate it 
would take a horseman three days to reach York from the southern coast. 

2 Freeman, N. C, pp 437-439. 



142 THE SHADOW OP THE ITORMAIir [harold 

given the French name of Senlac — the name with which recent 
historians have succeeded in dubbing the battle, in spite of the 
custom of eight centuries. 

Up to this point William had intended to force Harold to attack 
him on his own ground at Hastings. But the natural strength of 

the site which Harold had chosen for his camp, his evi- 
m William's dent purpose of fortifying, a rumor that the northern 

levies under Edwin and Morcar were approaching, and 
that an English fleet was coming around by the Channel, left Wil- 
liam no choice but immediate action. Harold, if once he were 
securely fortified in his hill camp with all England at his back to 
supply him with men and provisions, could not be dislodged. 

The night was spent in the Norman camp in the impressive 
religious ceremonies appointed by the medieval church for those 

about to brave death. ^ With sun-up the Normans were 
the^b^ltic amove; long before the third hour they had passed 

over the eight miles intervening and from the heights 
of Telham faced the line of Harold upon the opposite slope. The 
plan of Harold was simple. He had only to hold his ground and 
wear out the enemy as they dashed themselves against his lines, and 
thus compel William to retire again to his defenses at Hastings. 
Accordingly Harold's heavy armed infantry, the house-carls, 
selected each man for size and strength, clad in helmets and long 
coats of mail, armed with javelins for hurling and the terrible two- 
handed Danish ax for close counter, than whom there were no finer 
troops in Europe, were extended along the whole front, arranged in 
close order with their shields overlapping and forming the famous 
shield-wall.® Back of this living rampart thronged dense masses of 
half -armed yeomanry, ready to confront the advancing foe with a 
continuous shower of darts, arrows, and stones. On the very 
crown of the hill, at the point where the ground begins to slope to 

1 For the original account of the way in which the English passed the 
night, see William of Malmsbury, a.d. 1066. Cf. Freeman's criticism and 
explanation, N. C. Ill, 453 and 454. In all probability the English were 
not expecting to fight so soon. 

^ For criticism of Freeman's "palisades," see Round, Feudal England, 
pp. 340 and following. 



1066] HASTINGS 143 

the southeast, the spot marked to after ages by the high altar 
of William's Abbey Church of Battle, were planted the two-fold 
ensigns of England, the dragon of Wessex and the armed warrior 
advancing to battle, the latter the personal ensign of the king/ 
Here stood Harold and the men of his house surrounded each by 
his personal following. 

William saw that it would be useless to attempt to force his 
knights, the strength of his army, upon the living shield-wall with 
the broken ground and the rising hill against them. He 
^anopbattJe ^^^1^^ ^^^t by ordering forward his infantry, the light- 
armed archers and cross-bowmen, tempt the English to 
break their formation and then by hurling forward his cavalry, 
seek to pierce Harold's line. As Napoleon many centuries later at 
Waterloo, William proposed to alternate incessant charges of a 
powerful cavalry with a destructive fire of missiles. "Nothing 
can be more maddening than such an ordeal to the infantry soldier 
rooted to the spot by the necessities of his formation."^ 

This in a word explains the conduct of the battle. From nine 
o'clock until twelve the English withstood the alternating attacks 
of infantry and horse. Then William, who from his 
fhebattte^^^ post across the valley had been watching the slow prog- 
ress of the battle, bade the archers elevate their shafts 
that they might drop upon the English from above. The 
increased execution was apparent at once. The English, standing 
in dense masses behind the shield-line, but no longer protected by 
the tall shields of the house-carls and unable to ward ofE the bolts 
which dropped upon them out of the eye of the October sun, were 
stung to madness, and breaking through the line of heavy infantry 
surged forward, bearing the Norman bowmen and slingers before 
them. In vain William sent forward his knights; they plunged 
into the struggling throng, but only to add to the confusion. The 
English hardly felt the shock of the cavalry, but swept on madly 
carrying all before them, infantry and horse, down the slope and 
across the valley and up the southern hill to the very spot where 
the duke sat upon his horse. Then the battle roared around him ; 

'Freeman, N. C, p. 474. 

2 Oman, Art of War in the Middle Ages, p. 161. 



144 THE SHADOW OF THE NORMAL [harold 

his tall form disappeared in the crush, and the cry arose, "The 
duke is down!" "The duke is dead!" 

It was a desperate crisis for the Normans ; for a moment it 
seemed that the day was lost. But the English advance had begun 
to spend its energy as soon as it breasted the opposing 
ofthebattu ^^^^' William recovered his horse, and with bared head 
galloping hither and thither among the fugitives soon 
brought them back to their places. Harold's men also slowly 
retired to their former position, and succeeded in regaining the 
formation of the morning, but they no longer retained their former 
steadiness. William, moreover, had discovered their weakness, 
and by skillfully combining an attack and a feigned retreat with a 
well-directed counter charge of horse, this time probably delivered 
from the flanks, he was at last able to thrust his horsemen through 
the gaps in the English line, and the day was won. "Let us pic- 
ture the English line, stubbornly striving to the last to close its 
broken ranks ; the awful scene of slaughter and confusion, as the 
Old Guard of Harold, tortured by Norman arrows, found the 
horsemen among them at last, slashing and piercing right and left. 
Still the battle ax blindly smote, doggedly, grimly; still they 
fought, till the axes dropped from their lifeless grasp, and so they 
fell."^ 

Of those who saw Harold fall none lived to tell the story. Not 
a man of his personal following fled ; not a man was taken prisoner. 
His brothers, Gyrth and Leofwiu, his nephews, Sweyn's sons, all 
perished by his side. Many conflicting traditions concerning the 
fate of the king sprang up in a later day when the people under 
the Norman yoke remembered his gracious ways and just dooms; 
but the men who stood upon that bloody hillside in the morning, 
when the Sabbath sun rose upon the ghastly remains of the strug- 
gle of Saturday, did not know what had become of Harold. A 
disfigured body was found lying between Gyrth and Leof win and 
was buried by William's orders. At the time it was thought to be 
the body of Harold. Probably it was ; but whether Harold or not, 
it mattered little with the result. The die had been cast, and 
William had won. 

> Round, F. E., p. 390. 



CHAPTEE II 

THE COKQtTEST OP ENGLAJsTD 

EDGAR, OCT.-DEC, 1066 
WILLIAM I., 1006-1070 

The night of the 14th of October Wilh'am and his weary troops 

lay amid the sickening horrors of the speut battle. The next day, 

the Christian Sabbath, he tarried to bury his dead, 

William j ^ 

withdraws to and then withdrew to Hastings to rally the exhausted 
energies oi his men and prepare lor his next move. 
The cantion of William at this time is easily explained. An unknown 
country lay before him; he was without maps; he was ignorant 
of distances and locations. Edwin and Morcar were not far 
off with a second army, supposed to outnumber the one which he 
had just overthrown.^ It is known also that William was expect- 
ing reinforcements, which actually reached him shortly after the 
battle and enabled him to fill up his broken ranks. Here certainly 
was reason enough for delay. William incurred no risk. He was 
as safe behind his earthen ramparts at Hastings as ever. It is 
possible, moreover, that William thought also that now Harold 
was dead the English would come to him of their own accord and 
offer their allegiance.^ 

If, however, William entertained the hope that the English 

would bring the crown to him he soon found that he was seriously 

mistaken. We have it upon the authority of his chap- 

The English , . , • i -n t n tx • 

demand a lain that not a Single Englishman came to Hastings to 

do him homage. England was kingiess; but the people 

' Edwin and Morcar must have passed through London, not many 
hours after the departure of Harold ; they were so near the fatal field on 
the 14th that the chroniclers did not hesitate to make their slow going 
responsible for Harold's defeat. In the next century they are accused of 
actually abandoning the field. 

2 The sole motive assigned for William's delay in the Chronicle 
II, p. 1G8{R. S.). 

145 



146 THE CO]SrQUEST OF ENGLAND [edgab 

had no thought of submission. Edwin and Morcar with the 
northern levies had fallen back upon London, and their presence 
put fresh heart into the citizens. From the more distant shires 
also the reserves had continued to press into the city and swell the 
ranks of the patriot army. Then came the fugitives from Hast- 
ings, the wreckage of Harold's army, and the people for the first 
time learned with what glory their king had died with the "corpse- 
ring" about him. Their ardor broke forth in wild exultation, and 
they began to call loudly for a new king to lead them against the 
foreigner. 

The witan hastily gathered to do what could be done to 

save the state. All saw that they must accept William, or at once 

elect another king to take Harold's place. But upon 

Election of ■ ■, -, t • , • n n « m i -XT 

Edoar whom sliould their choice lall.-' The JNorman church- 

men, of whom there were still many in the kingdom, 
favored William. The Mercian and Northumbrian influence 
favored Edwin, who commanded the only army in the field; but 
the men of the southern shires and the men of the fleet vigorously 
opposed both, nntil at last in sheer desperation the witan fixed 
their choice upon the little lad Edgar, the grandson of Edmund 
Ironside. The people, however, were greatly pleased; the bards 
sang of the boy king as "England's darling"; men talked wildly 
of Athelney and Edington and affected to believe that like Alfred 
Edgar would overthrow the invader and win again the land. 

In the meanwhile William lay quietly at Hastings gathering 

his strength for the renewal of the struggle. On the 20th of 

October, six days after the battle, he led his troops out 

Tlie cam- > ^ x 

paignin of the city and took up his march toward Romney, 
For instead of moving directly upon London he pro- 
posed first to secure the great fortress which Harold had recently 
erected at Dover. Eoniney apparently attempted to resist him, 
and was burned. Dover castle surrendered on his approach; but 
the city suffered the fate of Eomney, although William wished to 
spare it. William now held the keys of England; Dover and 
Hastings were in his hands, and his communications with Nor- 
mandy were secure. The moral effect of the burning of Eomney 
and Dover had also gone before him ; other cities, conspicuously 



1066] BEKKHAMPSTEAD 147 

Canterbury, hastened to get what terms they could, and in a few 
weeks the whole country south of the Thames and as far west as 
Winchester had formally submitted. 

William spent a month before Canterbury in occupying and 
organizing these regions ; but by December 1 he was again in the 
saddle and moving along the old Eoman road through 
of the Eochester toward London. Southwark, the southern 

suburb of London, was taken and burned; but with the 
English fleet commanding the Thames it was impossible to cross the 
river at that point. Instead, therefore, of wasting his strength in 
futile attempts to throw his army into the city from the South- 
wark side William moved up to the bridge of Wallingford, the old 
causeway between Mercia and Wessex, and turning the river coun- 
termarched to the east, and again drew near to London by way of 
Berkhampstead. 

The slow but irresistible advance of William had long since 
begun to affect the spirits of the motley throng gathered in Lon- 
don. The first enthusiasm of the people over their 
sionatBe7-k- child king had given way to universal depression, and 

hampstead. , . , , ... • mi i i 

depression was fast passing into panic, ihe leaders, 
who from the beginning had no confidence in each other and little 
hope in the final issue, were thinking only of securing the best 
terms possible from the victor, each man for himself. Some, as 
Archbishop Stigand, had already met William at Wallingford and 
submitted to him there. Others, as Edwin and Morcar, had with- 
drawn to their own lands, hoping no doubt to be able to make 
better terms with William from a distance. Even stout-hearted 
old Anscar, the sheriff of Middlesex, who had dragged himself 
home from Hastings sore wounded, to direct the defense of Lon- 
don, saw the hopelessness of attempting to hold the city, and bowed 
before the grim necessity of the hour. Messengers, moreover, were 
at hand with gracious words from William : he had come not as a 
foreign conqueror but as a king to claim his own; it was his inter- 
est to deal kindly with his kingdom; his quarrel had been with 
Harold and not with the people; Harold had appealed to the 
sword, and Heaven had decided which man had the juster cause; 
all that William asked of the people was that they submit to the 



148 THE CONQUEST [ William l. 

arbitration of battle and accept him as a lawful candidate for the 
vacant crown. The message had the desired effect, and when 
William reached Berkhampstead he found waiting to receive him 
a group of English nobles, including with Edgar virtually all who 
were left in the city. William knew how to be gracious when 
policy demanded it. The little lad Edgar, the "uncrowned king," 
he received with a kiss and pledged his word that he would be to 
him a faithful lord. The leaders also, Bishop Eldred of York and 
others, he spoke fair; and they either then or soon after requested 
him to assume the crown. 

The request was not mere servile flattery. England was in dire 
need. For two months the land had been virtually without a king. 
The presence of an invading army had also added to the confusion. 
Trade and commerce had come to a standstill. Men ceased their 
ordinary pursuits. Every one waited for the issue. Even a for- 
eign king were better than the continuance of the present suspense. 

William accepted the trust, and fixed upon the approaching 
Christmas feast for the coronation. He, however, hesitated to 
trust himself to the men of London, and sent forward a 
for detachment of his own soldiers to prepare such a for- 

tress as he had already erected at Hastings, in order to 
overawe the city and provide a rallying point for his people in case 
of tumult or reaction.^ When these preparations were completed 
William entered the city. 

At last the holy morning came. All London was early astir 

and poured out toward Edward's stately cathedral at Westminster. 

A guard of Norman troopers lined the approaches com- 

finn oVwu'- ^^^^^^^g the neighboring squares. "Within the church 

^Jf^J-' ^^^- all was in readiness ; a new crown, rich with gems, was 

25, 1066. ' ' a ' 

ready for the ceremony; a crowd of spectators of both 
nations filled the minster. The great procession then swept on. 
A crowd of clergy bearing crosses marched first ; then followed the 
bishops; lastly, surrounded by the chief men of his own land and 
of his new kingdom, came the renowned duke himself with Ealdred 



^ Tradition has erroneously associated this fort with the famous 
Tower which was not begun until 1078. 



1066] CORONATION OF WILLIAM 149 

and Stigand on either side of him. Amid the shouts of the 
people William the Conqueror passed on to the royal seat before 
the high altar, there to go through the same solemn rites, which 
had so lately been gone through in the same spot by his fallen 
rival. The Te Deum which had been sung over Harold was now 
again sung over William, and now again in ancient form the crowd 
that thronged the minster was asked whether they would that the 
candidate who stood before them should be crowned king over the 
land. . . . Then the assent of both nations was given in ancient 
form. The voices which in the Epiphany had shouted, 'Yea, yea, 
King Harold,' shouted at Christmas with no less of seeming zeal, 
'Yea, yea. King William.' . . . The shout rang through the min- 
ster; it reached the ears of the Norman horsemen who kept watch 
round the building." ^ 

Then there came a change, a diversion in the ceremony, not 
found in the ancient ritual. The Normans without, at best but 
clumsy participants in a pageant to them so unwonted, had grown 
restless and uneasy under the pressure of surging crowds; they were 
irritated by jibes and taunts, the words of which they could not 
interpret but the spirit of which they understood only too well; 
and when they heard the shouting within the church, to them it 
was the beginning of a tumult, and seeking no doubt to divert the 
people and save their duke they began to fire the neighboring 
buildings. The glare of leaping flames smote upon the walls of the 
old minster and pierced the groined windows; fitful gleams darted 
across the crowded aisles and reached the distant chancel where 
the newly chosen king knelt before the altar. The vast audience 
were filled with nameless dread; then panic seized the people 
and they rushed forth to swell the greater confusion without. 
Even William was not unmoved and for the moment responded to 
the terror that had taken hold upon the multitude. Then the 
officiating clergy crowded about him, and the solemn ceremony 
went on again. In ill-disguised agitation the duke took the 
ancient oath of the English king. The trembling hand of Eldred 
of York, for the uncanonical Stigand had been denied the honor, 

^ Freeman, N. C. , III, 5.?7 jand foUowjca^ 



150 THE COISTQUEST [william I. 

poured the holy oil upon the bowed head, placed the rod and 
scepter in the royal hands, and set the diadem upon the royal head. 
Thus at last everything had been done according to legal form, 
and William was king of the English. 

The moral effect of the coronation was apparent at once. Wil- 
liam was now king; it was worse than useless to resist him 
further. The northern earls were satisfied that W^illiam 
ammimqnf would be coutcnt with nothing short of the England 
o/'f/(6no''f?t of Edward. They had little to fear from a winter 
em earls. campaign, but the early spring would certainly bring 
William and his Norman army upon them. His reputation also 
was now well established; "debonaire to those who submitted, but 
stark beyond measure to those who withstood him." Those who 
hesitated, therefore, felt that precious days of grace were slipping 
away. Only by immediate submission could they save their lands 
and their titles. Accordingly Edwin and Morcar, with a con- 
course of northern thanes and prelates, came and submitted to 
William at Barking, whither he had retired soon after the corona- 
tion. The king displayed the same gracious spirit which had won 
the nobles at Berkhampstead. Edwin and Morcar were received 
with the deference which became their station ; they were allowed 
to retain their earldoms and to enjoy their former semi-inde- 
pendence. No castles were built in their territories; no garrisons 
were sent into their cities. William, it is said, even had a fancy 
for the handsome young Mercian earl as a son-in-law. 

The position of William at this time was one of great strength. 

England had submitted to him; her nobles and prelates had given 

him their allegiance, and the witan had regularly 

Po^'itiiOTi of 

William bcstowed upon him the crown. Yet he was surrounded 
by many conflicting interests, and could move only with 
the utmost caution. He sought to explain his relation to his Eng- 
lish subjects upon the gracious theory of lawful succession to 
Edward the Confessor. The usurpation of Harold, as he chose to 
regard it, had forced upon him an unpleasant duty. Now that the 
duty had been performed he would have Englishmen forget his 
part in the transaction. He came not as a foreign conqueror to 
set aside their laws, but to vindicate them and establish again the 



1067] POSITION OF WILLIAM 151 

reign of order. But, however plausible the theory, the ugly fact 

could not be covered up that William was really a conqueror and 

that he held his conquest not by the loyal affection of the English 

but by the support of an array of foreign mercenaries. This host 

moreover one and all from the king's brother down, had been 

encouraged to follow him by promises of unlimited plunder. Now 

that they had spent their resources and had shed their blood, they 

expected, not without reason, that the promise of William would 

be fulfilled. 

Here, then, was tbe serious problem which confronted William. 

How was he to fulfill the terms of the coronation oath which he had 

made in the presence of his new subiects and yet 
The position .,.,.. , , t, 

of William keep the other promise no less sacred, as men regarded 

simplified hy :: . i • t i i t • ^ 

the English pledges in thosc days, which he had given to those who 

had made his coronation possible. How William began, 
apparently in all good faith, to tread the narrow path thus 
marked out for him, and how the shortsightedness of the English, 
their unfortunate attempts at revolt, simplified the task and 
enabled the king while keeping the letter of his coronation oath 
to rob them of their lands and reward his followers, and thus erect 
upon the very laws of England the throne of the conqueror, com- 
pletes the chapter of conquest. 

At the first, however, William evidently determined to give 
the English no cause to complain. While he was at Barking, pos- 
sibly even before leaving Westminster, he had granted 
fhcEnaiish^ ^^ Loiiclou its famous charter. In it he assnred the 
burghers that no man should be disturbed in any right 
or possession which had been his before the Normans came; no 
child should be defrauded of his inheritance. All rights were to 
be enjoyed by the city as freely as in the days of Edward.^ Out- 
side of the city also William soon gave the people to understand 
that they had naught to fear as long as they obeyed his laws. The 
regions which he occupied were strictly policed, and all evil-doers 
were severely punished. Special solicitude was manifested in pro- 
tecting the traveler and the merchant as they journeyed on the 

^ For charter see Stubbs, S. C. , p. 83. 



152 COXFISCATIONS OF WILLIAM [william i. 

king's highway. Civil officers were exhorted not to bring the 
king's service into disrepute by unseemly zeal. Military officials 
were to deal with the conquered people with patience and gentle- 
ness; subordinate officers and common soldiers were forbidden to 
plunder; license and even drunkenness were declared offences 
against the military code. Special military courts also were estab- 
lished, where complaints might be lodged and where punishment, 
without regard to birth or nationality, was promptly meted out to 
the unfortunate soldier who fell into evil ways. 

So much William did for his conquered subjects. Yet he had 

not forgotten his pledges to the men who had followed him over 

seas, and in order to reward them he confiscated the 

catiom'of estates of all who had gone down to Hastings with 

William. . ti n t • 

Harold. In some counties, as Berkshire, very few of 
Harold's thanes had survived the battle; but the broken families, 
doubly distraught by the loss of husband or father, found no mercy 
in William's eyes; their lands were taken from them and turned 
over to strange lords. So thorough was the work that when the 
famous survey was made at the close of William's reign, ^ there were 
whole counties^ in wliich not a single landowner of English birth 
was to be found. From these estates, the number of which reached 
up into the thousands, reinforced by the enormous holdings of 
Harold and his brothers, by the old crown lands, and by the per- 
sonal estates of the Confessor,^ which also fell to the spoil of war, 

'Seep. 17L ^j^gnt and Sussex. 

^Tlie old theory which explained /oZ/c-Zand as "public land '' in dis- 
tinction from book-land or private land, and left a large residuum of this 
unclaimed land to be confiscated by William and turned into King's-land, 
terra regis has been generally abandoned. Folk-land was land held by 
common or customary law — folk-right — and was the ordinary form under 
which the great mass of landowners held their estates. Book-land was 
land held under special privileges granted by book or charter — book-right 
— and was the form under which churches, monasteries, and grandees often 
held lands, although they might also hold land by folk-right. The only 
public lands known to the old English state were the Crown lands or official 
estates of the king, which might be held either as folk-land or book-land. 
For distinction between folk-land and book-land see Vinogradoff in Eng- 
lish Hist. Review, Vol. Ill, pp. 1-17, and Maitland, Domesday and Beyond 
pp. 226-258. 



1067] THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND 153 

William was enabled not only to reward his friends, but to reward 
them in a right princely way and still retain the lion's share for 
himself. 

In this wholesale plunder of his English subjects in order to 
enrich his Norman following, technically William did not violate 
his coronation oath ; for in accordance with his theory 
of the of rightful succession those who opposed him were rebels, 

and by the laws of medieval warfare had forfeited both 
their lives and their goods. The transfer of proprietorship also 
was not effected in any violent or arbitrary manner, but by the 
regular action of the courts and as a result of due process of law. 
Later William's chaplain could say that no land which was bestowed 
upon Frenchmen had been taken from Englishmen unlawfully. 
William, moreover, had no thought of molesting the great body of 
English landholders; even those who held lands of lords who had 
been condemned, that is, the minor thanes and the more wealthy 
ceorls, were not disturbed. The confiscation and regrant gave to 
the new landlord no rights or powers which the old landlord did 
not possess. On rent day the new lord might exact the tithe fixed 
by customary law, but not a grain more. He had simply slipped 
into the place of the old lord, with all his rights and duties 
unchanged. 

Another measure which also dates from this period and which 
has been variously interpreted, was the so-called re-purchase of 
titles, imposed upon those landholders who had not been 
^fmus^"''^^ disturbed by the confiscations. William, in the begin- 
ning at least, possibly did not intend the measure as a 
means of extortion, but rather to hasten the return of quiet. If a 
man felt any uncertainty about the title to his lands he had simply 
to present himself to the royal commissioners, name his lands and 
lay down his gift or fee, when he received the lands back again and 
with them a title which no man could question. No show of force 
was necessary on William's part. The people were evidently as 
much interested as the king, and were glad to get an opportunity 
to secure their titles and take up again the old peaceful course of 
their lives. It is noteworthy that the transaction passed off with- 
out conflict and without the shedding of a drop of blood. 



154 EARLY POLICY OP WILLIAM [william i. 

Affairs were thus moving smoothly enough when William unfor- 
tunately determined to leave his new kingdom in the hands of his 
brother, Bishop Odo, and his old friend, William Fitz- 
wlmamfA) Osbern, as regents and return to Normandy. With the 
Normandy, exception of Osulf in upper Northumbria, Northumber- 
land, the northern earls had accepted William as overlord. 
In the southwest Devonsliire and Cornwall still held aloof. In 
Herefordshire and other places on the Welsh border there still 
smoldered a lingering spirit of defiance. The Welsh princes also 
had refused homage. Yet the kingdom had been won, and with no 
rival in the field to rally these broken fragments William had 
nothing to fear, especially as he was careful to take with him to 
Normandy as his guests Edwin, Morcar, and Waltheof, with Edgar 
and Stigand — hostages undoubtedly for the good behavior of 
the nation during his absence. 

There is no evidence that William's suspicions at this time 

extended further than this. He had begun forts at Hastings and 

London, and had garrisoned Harold's fortress at Dover. 

ItsF^^m'^ t ^^^ ^^^ ^^^^ begun a castle at Norwich and probably at 

trwtthe Hereford. He had, moreover, made Odo earl of Kent 
people. ' ' 

and Fitz-Osbern earl of Hereford, with special military 
powers such as Harold and his brothers had once possessed under 
Edward. But these measures had been prompted either by the 
temporary needs of the late campaign, or by the hostility of the 
Welsh and the threat of a new Danish invasion, rather than by 
any purpose of overawing the people. After the insurrections of 
the next two years had taught William the temper of the people, 
castles shot up over the kingdom like mushrooms, and their pur- 
pose was obvious enough. As yet, however, it was in accordance 
with William's policy to make an ostentatious show of confidence 
in his English subjects; and although he refrained from appointing 
new earls to take the places of Harold and his brothers, he con- 
tinued to leave Edwin and Morcar undisturbed, and apparently had 
no thought of making further changes in the system under which 
Edward the Confessor had held the crown. 

The spring and summer William spent in his beloved Normandy 
in a peaceful but somewhat vainglorious succession of fetes in 



1067] DISTUEBAKCES OF 1067 155 

honor of his recent successes and the safe home-coming. Affairs in 
England, however, were not moving so smoothly. William had 
invested one Copsige, an Englishman of rank, with the 
EmianT earldom of Northumberland, and sent him to unseat 
Summer Osulf and hold the northern earldom in his name. At 

(ijlOoV. 

first Copsige had been successful, but later he was 
surprised and slain by Osulf and his supporters scattered. Here- 
fordshire also was the scene of other reverses, where in spite of the 
efforts of William Fitz-Osbern, one Edric the Wild, an English- 
man, had continued to maintain himself, and in midsummer sup- 
ported by the Welsh princes,. Bledyn and Rhiwallon, had swept 
through the shire, ravaging the country and treating the unhappy 
Englishry as his enemies, A third disturbance, which was more 
of the nature of an English rising, broke out at Dover, caused 
directly by the stupid oppression of Odo; and although the effort 
signally failed it produced an uneasiness and suspicion among the- 
resident Normans which in turn reacted upon the English. 

Early in December William returned. The condition of the 
kingdom, as described by Ordericus, was on the whole quite satis- 
Thereturnof factory. "All the cities and provinces which he had 
D^ecember himself visited or had occupied with garrisons obeyed 
^^^''- his will ; but on the frontiers of the kingdom, in the 

northern and western districts, the same wild independence pre- 
vailed which formerly made the people insubordinate, except when 
they pleased, to the kings of England in the times of Edward and 
his predecessors. " ^ In accordance with the custom of English kings, 

William called together his witan to keep the Christmas 
ofTFesSi^^ feast with him at Westminster and inquire into the 
>^tej\-Dec. 25, state of the kingdom. Here we see him at his best, as 

with that gracious affability which so well became him 
when he chose to assume it, he received the bishops and nobles ; 
"when they made any request it was graciously granted, and he 
listened favorably to what they reported or advised . . . some- 
times he gave instructions to the Normans with equal care and 
address; at others he privately warned the English to be continu- 

» Ordericus Vitalis, Bk. IV, 11. 



156 THE COISTQUEST OF ENGLAND [william l. 

ally on their guard in all quarters against the crafty designs of their 
enemies." ^ 

Two matters of prime importance are connected with this mid- 
winter assembly of 1067. One was the trial of Eustace of Bou- 
logne, who had encouraged the men of Dover in their 

The Dane- o ? o 

field revived, recent revolt — the same Eustace who had made so 
much trouble for Edward the Confessor seventeen years 
before.^ Another incident generally associated with this council 
was the setting of "a heavy tax on the poor people." Here with- 
out question is the Danegeld again, the only tax known to English 
kings. Moreover there was pretext enough for such a levy at this 
time, for Canute's nephew, Sweyn of Denmark, encouraged by 
English refugees, was seriously contemplating the setting up of a 
rival claim to the English throne. It was probably also at. this 
witenagemot that William filled the vacant see of Dorchester by 
the appointment of Remigius of Fecamp, the first ISTorman bishop 
appointed to an English see after the Conquest. 

Upon the breaking up of the witenagemot William turned his 
attention to the reduction of the parts of his kingdom which still 
refused to do him homage. How far the shires which 
The rising in lay beyoud Winchester had submitted we do not know. 
west, 1068. The bishops of Hereford and Glastonbury had yielded, 
but the people of these western shires were by no means 
reconciled to the new rule. A feud at home had withdrawn the 
Welsh princes from the invasion of Hereford, but at Exeter, the 
great city of the west, the discontent was assuming every day a 
more formidable aspect. William learned, moreover, that the 
citizens were sending out messengers through the neighboring 
shires and actively preparing to take the field in the spring. He 
determined, therefore, to surprise his foes by a winter campaign 
and by striking at Exeter prevent the intended rising. Bridport, 
Wareham, Dorchester, and Shaftsbury were burned. Twenty years 
later, when the survey was made, the shire had not recovered; at 
Bridport not a house was able to pay taxes. ^ As William drew 

1 Ordericus Vitalis, Bk. IV, 11. 

^ For jurisdiction of William over Eustace see Freeman, N. C, p. 129. 

3 Freeman, N. C, IV, p. 151. 



1068] EISING OP 1068 157 

near Exeter a body of leading citizens met him and abjectly sub- 
mitted. But the people rose in fury aud refused to acknowledge 
the act of capitulation. In vain William insisted on the binding 
authority of the submission of the leaders; he brought before 
the city one of the unfortunate hostages, and in view of the citi- 
zens put out his eyes. The inhuman sight only roused the people 
to greater fury. Then for eighteen days William sat down before 
the city and took it at last only by reason of the Norman's superior 
knowledge of siege warfare. The townsmen prayed for mercy, and 
William, still the debonaire king to those who submitted, granted 
the prayer. The founding of the inevitable castle followed ; the 
fosse, the mound and the massive fort surmounting all, forms with 
which Englishmen were fast becoming only too familiar. A con- 
fiscation of lands also followed as a matter of course, but as in the 
case of those in the east the humbler landholders were left undis- 
turbed. The lands which belonged to the Godwin family, which 
were very extensive in the western counties, were seized, but God- 
win's daughter, Edward's widow, was not molested. It is to be 
noted that William's army in the campaign against Exeter was 
composed largely of Englishmen. The foreigners who had won 
Hastings for him had now either been dismissed or distributed 
through the country in permanent garrisons. 

The western rising, unlike the attempt at Dover, seems to have 

been something more than a local outbreak. The presence of 

Harold's mother and sons within the walls of Exeter, 

Nature of • t , i 

thcrmngof evidently no mere accident, gives some dignity to the 
stand of the people of the west, and makes it appear 
as a sort of forlorn hope of the family of Godwin. Was it more 
than this? Was there any expectation of a concerted rising of the 
northern earldoms as well, any widely extended plot by which all 
the disaffected elements of the nation were to combine for one last 
heroic stand against the Conqueror? If so the unexpected winter 
campaign of William had effectually prevented the north from act- 
ing, and the men of Exeter were left to brave William's wrath 
alone. 

So quick and sharp had been the work of the campaign that 
by the end of March William was able to hold the Easter assem- 



158 THE CONQUEST OF E]SrGLA.N"D [william I. 

bly at Winchester. Six weeks later he was again at Westminster 

where he kept the Pentecost, the third assembly of the winter. 

This gathering was made eventful by the introduction of a 

new feature in the court history of English kings, no less 

than the public recognition of William's wife Matilda 
Matilda,thc \. ,. . ^1 . r, -n T u 1 • 

first English by a coronation. Ji,ver since the wives of iiinghsh kin^s 

queen. .. ctiti t^ 

have shared with their consorts all the honorary dig- 
nities and privileges of royalty."^ 

In the summer the belated movement in the north at last broke 
forth. Edwin and Morcar fled the court to put themselves at 

the head of the rising. The real leadei:s, however, 
nfliw^mrrth ^^re the bravc Gospatrick, whom William himself had 
foX™^'"' I'ecently sent into the north to take upTl^ work of 

Copsige, and Maerlesweyn, Harold's sheriff of Lincoln, 
who had brought with him out of London Edgar Ethel^ig and his 
sisters. Malcolm of Scotland had also pledged his support and was 
expected to invade England in force. But from the first Edwin 
and Morcar had little heart in the undertaking, and when William 
began a slow but masterful march northward through Mercia, 
building and fortifying as he advanced, their courage ebbed and 
they were glad to be received back again into their old^dependent 
relation. The two earls had brought little to the patriot cause; 
but they took much when they abandoned it. Their submission 
disheartened and discouraged those who ought never to have 
depended upon them. Malcolm's army of Scots failed to material- 
ize, and finally Maerlesweyn with Edgar and his sisters retired into 
Scotland to find a safe exile at the court of the Scottish king. 

By the time William reached Nottingham the rising had already 
subsided. York, the second city of the kingdom, quietly allowed 

him to take possession and rear a Norman castle on the 
tionoftiie high ground within the southern quarter. Here he left 

TiOVtlX o <_ 1 

in command three of his most trusted captains, Eobert 
Fitz-Richard, Gilbert of Ghent, and William Malet, an English- 
man, and after making peace with Malcolm began the homeward 
march, retiring by way of Lincoln, Cambridge, and Huntingdon, 

. : ^s^ . 

^ _- ^ 

' Freenaan, N. C, IV, p. 179. 



1068] DISCONTENT OP ENGLISH 159 

in each city building a castle and establishing a permanent gar- 
rison. 

When William neared London disquieting news again reached 
him from the west, where the sons of Harold, who had escaped 

from Exeter to Ireland, had returned to the Bristol 
Hiinsintiie coast with a fleet of fifty ships, manned by Irish Danes. 

They first attempted to enter Bristol, but the people 
gave them little encouragement. They then descended upon 
Somerset, but the English levies, apparently without any Norman 
help at all, rallied and drove them off. 

William must have taken deep satisfaction in the results of the 
summer's work. The northern earls had proved themselves devoid 

of spirit, and what had promised to be a serious rising 
content of had Collapsed almost at the first rumor of William's 

northward march. In the west the sons of Harold had 
failed to awaken anything but hostile sentiment among their coun- 
trymen, and had been ignobly beaten off by the English them- 
selves, like any common pirates. Yet William could hardly be 
blind to' the fact that the country was seething with discontent, 
and that the English were everywhere dissatisfied and disloyal. 
They had generally yielded obedience to the new government, but 
their obedience was sullen, without heart and inspired only by fear. 
In reorganizing and restoring the government William had 
found his greatest difficulty at the point where the administration 

came into contact with the local institutions which 
securing co- depended for their efficiency upon the support of the 

people. He first tried the experiment of ruling English- 
men by Englishmen; but he could not find Englishmen of stand- 
ing who were willing to bear the opprobrium of entering into the 
foreign king's hire, and he was shrewd enough to see that it was 
worse than useless to attempt to enforce laws by means of agents 
for whom the community had no respect. Yet the laws must be 
observed ; the authority of the courts must be maintained. The 
king had no recourse, therefore, save to turn to his own people. 
At first he had confined the Normans to the strictly military duty 
of castle guarding, but little by little he now began to introduce 
them into such civil oflBces as those of sheriff and portreeve — 



160 THE COKQUEST OF ENGLAND [william I. 

the one the chief magistracy in the shire, the other the chief 
magistracy in the great merchant town.. Here, however, he was 
confronted by a new problem. The English rapidly developed a 
hatred for the Norman sheriffs and portreeves, only one degree less 
bitter than their hatred for the turncoat Englishmen who had been 
willing to soil their hands with the king's money. With every 
day, therefore, the difficulty of punishing crime or enforcing law 
was increasing. Even good men did not hesitate to protect out- 
laws or baffle the king's officers in the pursuit of a criminal. The 
Norman official, moreover, understood the English tongue indiffer- 
ently; he knew less about English customary law, and was inclined 
to treat the rights of the people with contempt, often giving his 
decisions in an arbitrary, off-hand way in defiance of all precedents 
known to the people. 

It was perhaps at this time, when William was struggling with 
the question of local order, that there grew up the custom of requir- 
ing Presentment of Engluliry } The English, in despair 
ofEn^iishri ^^ securing justice, especially when the legal adversary 
happened to be a Norman often took the law into their 
own hands ; secret murders increased at an alarming rate, and as 
conviction was impossible, William, in order to protect his foreign- 
born subjects, empowered the sheriff, in case the victim proved to 
be a Erenchman and the hundred did not produce the murderer 
within a week, to levy a penalty of forty-six marks upon the hun- 
dred itself. The response of the English was to strip the body 
and mutilate it beyond recognition. The law officers then 
assumed that a body found thus disfigured must be the body of a 
Frenchman, and laid the burden upon the hundred of proving by 
the process of Presentment of Englishry that the victim was- not 
French. 

Thus the feeling was rapidly gaining ground among the 
English that under the Norman there was no redress. William 
sought to allay the discontent by sending home more of his Nor- 

' Tills custom which was generally established in the reign of Henry 
I., was formerly supposed to date from the laws of Canute, but it is now 
assigned to the early Norman period and undoubtedly grew out of the 
efforts of William to protect his own people. 



1069] MASSACRE AT DUEHAM 161 

mans and Flemings. But this only weakened him, while it did not 
materially diminish the ill-will of his new subjects. He could not 
enforce the laws ; he could not prevent Englishmen and Normans 
from preying upon each other. 

When William assembled the midwinter witenagemot of 1068 

nothing of all this was yet apparent on the surface. The land 

was everywhere quiet, save in the distant earldom of 

The mas- 

sacreatDur- Gospatriclv, and to this extreme northern earldom 
William now turned his attention. For the third time 
in two years he selected an earl for the troublesome province. The 
new earl was one Robert of Comines, probably a Flemish adventurer, 
of whom nothing is known, save his fatal errand in quest of the dan- 
gerous prize which he had drawn in the court lottery. He entered 
Durham without opposition; the adventurers who attended him 
spread over the town and began to treat it as a captured city. But 
the fyrd of Northumberland had quietly approached the city under 
cover of the night, and in the morning, breaking down the gates, 
entered the streets and began a massacre of Robert's men. Quarter 
was neither asked nor given, and in a few hours Robert and all 
his knights save one had been destroyed. 

The affair at Durham was the beginning of the grave troubles 
of William's reign. The massacre of a paper earl and a few hun- 
dred adventurers was perhaps not a serious matter, but the wild 
spirit of the north was at last abroad. A series of revolts suc- 
ceeded each other, each more desperate and bloody, as the utter 
hopelessness of the struggle became more apparent ; William on 
his part very perceptibly hardened under the repeated irritation, 
and finally abandoned his policy of conciliation altogether for a 
policy of brutal coercion. 

York imitated the example of Durham. William Malet, who 
was now in sole command, was compelled to retire into the castle 
and stand a regular siege. The rising was by no means 
Forfe^^T^" a merely thoughtless local tumult. The reaj)pearance 
west*''^ of Edgar and Maerlesweyn, of Gospatrick and the most 

of the northern leaders gave it a fairly representative 
character. William fully realized the importance of prompt and 
energetic action, and roused himself to unusual exertion. He 



162 THE CONQUEST OF EXGLAND [williamI. 

reached York by a forced march, sweeping down upon the city as 
swiftly and mercilessly as a bird of prey upon its quarry. For 
eight days he remained, and then retired to Winchester to hold 
the Easter feast, leaving Fitz-Osbern in command. York had 
yielded but the country was by no means reduced. A second 
castle was reared within the city. An expedition was also sent 
to Durham to punish its people but accomplished nothing. A 
rally of the fyrd of Yorkshire, however, was beaten by Fitz-Osbern 
not far from York, and for the moment the danger had passed, 
Edgar retired to Scotland, and the leaders went into hiding. 
The sons of Harold, who were again troubling the western coast, 
were beaten in Devonshire by the local levies, and after the loss 
of seventeen hundred men were glad to escape to their ships. It 
was their last attempt; they disappear soon afterwards in the petty 
brawls of the Irish court, in which their friend and patron. King 
Dermid, lost his life. 

In spite of these reverses, however, when in the autumn the long- 
expected fleet of Sweyn of Denmark, after various unsuccessful 
attempts at landing in the south, appeared in the 

Third rising Humber, the Northumbrian shires rose as one man to 
of the north. ' 

Autumn of greet the Dane. A second fleet from Scotland also 

1069. '^ 

brought back the exiles, Edgar, Gospatrick, and Maerle- 
sweyn. Bnt greater in prestige than all, Waltheof, in whose 
veins flowed the blood of Siward, Edward's earl of Northumbria, 
and who had been made earl of Northampton and Huntingdon, 
possibly in the brief reign of Harold, withdrew from the court of 
William and cast in his lot with the patriot cause. 

In the northern capital misfortunes followed each other in 
quick succession. The Danes landed September 8. On Satur- 
day, the 19th, the sorrowing people of York laid away 
Landing of [^^ ^be tomb the remains of Eldred, "the last primate of 

the Banes, ' ^ 

Sept.s, the old northern stock." His death at such a moment 

lObV. 

was a national calamity; he could not have averted 
the approaching storm; he might have tempered the wrath of 
William. The very day of Eldred's funeral the Norman garrison 
fired some of the houses which stood near the foss before 
the castle, on the plea that these buildings might serve as a cover 



1069] MASSACKE AT YORK 163 

for an attacking enemy. But the flames soon got beyond the con- 
trol of the incendiaries, and from the foot of the castle mound 
swept across the city to the northwest, even reaching the distant 
minster. The people spent a wild Sunday in the midst of tumult 
and the heartrending scenes which accompany the burning of a 
populous city. They thought only of saving themselves and such 
movable property as they could bear away on their shoulders. 
When the motley army of Danes and English appeared before the 
city on Monday morning the fires were still raging. 

The garrison attempted a sally, but were driven back into the 

city with great slaughter. Three thousand Normans fell, dying 

among the flames which their own hands had kindled. 

]\^ ft *^*^(X(*7'& Of^ 

the garrison Waltheof was the hero of the fight. The northern 

of York. 

scalds long continued to sing of his mighty deeds on 
that day: "How the son of Siward gave the corpses of the 
Frenchmen as a choice banquet for the wolves of Northumber- 
land." ^ The garrison was exterminated ; but the besiegers, instead 
of preparing to make the most of their victory, acted like a lot of 
children — thoughtless barbarians rather — for when no garrison 
remained longer to resist them they spent their fury upon the two 
castles, to them the emblems of all that they had lost and suffered. 
The rumor of the rising of York, the coming of the Danes, and 
the destruction of the Norman garrison spread like wildfire. The 

men of Shropshire, of Somerset, and even distant 
fhcr'evoil Dorsetshire, thrilled at the great news from the north 

which lost nothing by the distance over which it 
traveled. They too had garrisons to fight and castles to raze. 
Edric the Wild, with his Herefordshire men who had never yet 
bowed the knee to the Norman, the men of Chester also, who had 
given refuge to Harold's widow, and Bledyn, sole king of Gynedd 
and Powys, with his untamed Welshmen, all gathered for one last 
heroic effort to drive the Norman from the land. 

The people, however, were reckoning without William, nor had 
they yet fathomed the depth of cruelty of which his fierce nature 
was capable when once the lion in him was thoroughly aroused. 

1 Freeman, N. C, IV, p. 267. 



164 THE CONQUEST OP ENGLAND [william I. 

He hastened from the wood of Deams, where he was hunting 

when the fell news came, to gather his men and strike such 
blows as only William could strike. Bishop Geoffrey 
^^th"''^^'"rt ^^ Coutances was dispatched against Somerset and 
Dorset with the men of London, Winchester, and 
Salisbury; Englishmen against Englishmen, the hopeless feature of 
the struggle to the men who believed themselves fighting for the 
liberation of England. Those who were taken in arms were muti- 
lated, and then dismissed with maimed and broken bodies to drag 
out useless lives. Exeter not only refused to join the insurrection, 
but at the head of its garrison charged upon the rebels. On the 
Welsh border a combined force of English and Welsh under Edric 
succeeded in burning Shrewsbury, but then dispersed. The move- 
ment against Stratford was more serious, and required the presence 
of W^illiam before the last embers were stamped out. 

While William's lieutenants were thus putting down with a 

stern hand the risings in the west, William himself with a force of 

picked cavalry was hastening into the north. York 

The third re- ^ ^ ° 

ductionnf was a wastc of blackened ruins; his castles destroyed 
and his garrisons massacred. But when he reached the 
seat of the war he found that the great northern army had dis- 
persed of its own accord ; the Danes to their ships and the English 
to their homes. Nothing was left for him but to hunt out the 
stragglers and destroy them as he could find them. He spent 
Christmas in his northern capital, and then with grim determina- 
Thedevas- tiou gave his attention to the work of rendering the 
Northum- northern shires incapable of another revolt. For a 
terofioro. hundred miles the country was systematically laid waste. 
Houses were burned; crops, stores, ploughs, and carts were 
destroyed; all cattle were slaughtered. The people were left in 
the dead of the northern winter to die of cold and hunger. Even 
the Norman Ordericus could not recount the awful work without 
a shudder. William is no longer the king, the father of a way- 
ward people; he is henceforth the grim impersonation of conquest, 
and conquest too as it was understood in the eleventh century. 
When seventeen years later the Domesday Survey was made up, 
only one mournful word, but often re^^eated, was needed to describe 



1070] THE PALL OP CHESTER 165 

the condition of these northern lands, once so fertile and so popu- 
lous: "Waste!" "Waste!" "Waste!" 

The work of conquest was now almost completed. Chester, 
secure behind its mountains and protected by an unusually severe 
The fall of winter, still remained defiant. But this fancied secur- 
thechasme- ity ouly rendered the conquest more easy. At the head 
west. of a determined band William made his way over all but 

impassable mountain roads, facing blinding storms of sleet and 
rain, floundering through swollen torrents, suffering incredible 
hardships, and suddenly appeared before the walls of Chester. 
The last fortress in England to hold out against him was taken 
apparently without resistance, and destroyed, and upon the ruins 
rose the Norman castle. The surrounding lands of Cheshire, 
Shropshire, Derbyshire, and Staffordshire were then harried and 
the population left to starve as in Yorkshire. Streams of gaunt 
fugitives, starving men, women, and children, found their way 
southward begging for food. The streets and churchyard of 
Evesham, far away on the borders of distant Warwick, were 
crowded with these pitiful victims of William's wrath. Many had 
perished by the way, and those who reached Evesham were so 
nearly famished that they were unable to swallow the food which 
the good abbot Ethelwy gave them. The heartbreaking scenes 
which were taking place in the streets of Evesham were to be seen 
in the streets of every town and hamlet that lay within two or 
three days' march of the stricken district. 

Thus William girdled his kingdom with a wilderness. Of the 
sum total of the fatalities of this dreadful winter we can only guess. 
In a cold-blooded determination to destroy regardless of the suffer- 
ing caused, it is doubtful if anything in the fifth century can 
compare with the wickedness of William's vengeance. Surely 
nothing surpasses it before the era of Spanish domination in 
Europe and America. 

The great work to which William had set his hand was now 
accomplished. At Hastings he had won the right to present him- 
Engiand ^^^^ ^^ ^ candidate for' the crown of Edward the Gon- 
conquered. fessor. ' At Berlchampstead, London, and Barking, the 
nation, through its leaders, ha,d accepted him as king. But it 



166 



THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND 



b 



was not until the north and west had been crushed that the land 
was his. There were still occasional revolts. For more than a 
year the outlaw Hereward held out in the marshes 
of Ely. The treacherous brothers, Edwin and Morcar, 
the heroic Waltheof, played their last part in these insurrections. 
Even the king's brother Odo and many others of his Norman 
following turned against him, but the throne which they had helped 
to erect was not to be shaken. England was conquered. 



CONTEMPOKARIES OF EDWAED THE CONFESSOR AND WILLIAM I. 



KINGS OF FRANCE 

Henry I., d. 1060 
Philip L, 1060— 

EMPERORS 

Henry III., d. 1056 
Henry IV., 1056— 



COUNTS OF 
FLANDERS 

Baldwin V., father- 
in-law of William, 
d 1067 

Baldwin VI., 1067- 



1042-1087 

POPES 
Leo IX., 1048-1054 
Victor IL, 1054-1057 
Stephen IX., 1057-1058 
Benedict X., anti- 

poiie, 1058-1059 
Nicolas II., 1059-1061 
Alexander IL.lOGl -1073 
Gregory VII., 1073-1085 
Victor III., 1085-1087 



KINGS OF SCOTS 

Duncan I., assas- 
sinated, 1040(?) 

Macbeth 

The Usurper, 
1040(?)-1054. 

Malcolm III. 

Canmore, 1054 — 



Duncan and 
Macbeth are the 
well known char- 
acters of Shak- 
spere's play 



CHAPTEK III 



THE NOEMAN EEORGAKIZATION" OF THE KIIS'GDOM 
INTRODUCTION OF FEUDALISM 



AND THE 



WILLIAM I., 1070-1087 



Robert 

Duke of 

Normandy 

d. 1134 

I 

William Clito 



THE FAMILY OF THE CONQUEROR 

William I. = Matilda 

k. 1066-1087 I daughter of the Coimt of Flanders 



William II. 
k. 1087-1100 



Henry I. = 
R. 1100-1135 



Matilda of Scotland 
grand d. of Edmund 
Ironside 



Adela = Stephen 
Count of 



Wilham, d. 1120 



Count of Flanders, d. 1128 



Matilda - ■! ^- Henry V. Emp. 
iviauiud, -- -j 3 Geoffrey Plantagenet 
Coimt of Anjou 
Henry II., k. 1154-1189 



Blois 



Theobald IV. Stephen = Matilda, 

Count of Blois k. of Eng. I daughter of Eustace III. 

1135-1154 Count of Boulogne 



Henry 

Bishop of 

Winchester 



Eustace, d. 1152 



WilUam, Coimt of Boulogne, d. 1159 



The Norman Conquest affected the development of England in 
every possible way; architecture, law, finance, trade, industry, 

military science, administration, in short, every phase 
effects of the of national activity, felt the touch of new thought and 

quickened into forms heretofore unknown to the pro- 
vincial and isolated Anglo-Saxon, But most marked was the 
influence of the Conquest upon the further development of English 
political and social institutions. Politically England had passed 
far on in the course of decline since the days of Athelstan ; the 
royal authority had been undermined; the crown had been shorn 
of its dignity ; its eminence had faded before the waxing power 
of the great earls. The Norman king at once restored to the 
monarchy its old prestige ; arrested the further independent devel- 
opment of the Ian dhol ding class, and in spite of most bitter and 

167 



168 NORMAI^ REORGANIZATION [william I. 

persistent opposition succeeded in laying again the foundations of 
the throne in the supremacy of law and the restoration of the royal 
authority. 

The attitude of William toward the old English system was 
not that of a revolutionist; he was not consciously an innovator; 
he accepted the crown with the rights and limitations 
the old Eng- prescribed by the ancient customary law of England 
unchanged. Yet by inspiring the old institutions with 
his own mighty personality he imparted to them new life and new 
significance. Hundred-moot and shire-moot went on as before; 
but their findings received a new importance. The sheriff, the 
executive officer of the shire, no longer stood in awe of the local 
magnate; the king had appointed him; the king was behind him, 
and to the king alone was he responsible. The ancient police 
system, once represented in the gild and later in the tithing, which 
made the local community responsible for the production of the 
criminal, reappeared in the frankpledge,^ but to be enforced with 
vigor and thoroughness unknown to the old English courts. 
The ' earldom of semi-regal powers survived in the counties 
lialatine^ but the vast agglomerations of estates, lordships, and 
shires, the giant earldoms of the houses of Godwin, Leofric, and 
Siward, which had menaced the crown in the days of Edward the 
Confessor, were broken up, their privileges assumed by the crown, 
and their lands distributed. 

The national council, the ancient witenagemot, survived in the 
great council, magnum concilium; but the occasional and spasmodic 
gatherings, the occurrence of which like the meetings 
mwmmi ^^ ^^® later States -Greneral of France commonly betok- 
ened impending calamity, now passed into the impressive 
and regular courts, which William held thrice each year whenever 
he was in England. Here, amid great pomp and ceremony, he wore 
his crown, "at Easter at Winchester, at Whitsuntide at Westmin- 
ster, at Midwinter at Gloucester"; and here he met his gran- 

^ For nature, extent and date of introduction of frankpledge, see 
Pollock andMaitland, History of English Law, 2d Ed., Vol. I, pp. 568-571. 

^Two counties palatine svirvived the reign of William ; Chester and 
Durham. 



CURIA REGIS 169 

dees in solemn assembly, "all the rich men over all England, 
archbishops and suffragan bishops, abbots and earls, thanes and 
knights." ^ 

The great council was further known as the king's court, cuiHa 
regis; but only for a short time, however, for it was soon called upon 

to share its functions with another body, also a curia 
gurio. regis. The origin of this body is obscure. It seems 

to have been developed partly out of the administrative 
functions of the group of officials who constituted the king's house- 
hold, partly out of the appellate powers of the witenagemot, and 
partly out of powers assumed in direct imitation of the ducal 
court of William in ISTormandy. It was composed of the great 
administrative officers of the crown and certain of the more promi- 
nent members of the baronage. At its head was the chief justiciar, 
a new officer instituted by William, who presided at the sessions of 
the court in the absence of the king and who further acted as 
regent whenever the monarch left the kingdom. With the chief 
justiciar there were associated certain other high officials beside a 
group of inferior justices, also known as justiciars. Of the great 
officials, of prime importance were the chancellor, an officer who 
dates from the reign of Edward the Confessor, who was the king's 
chief secretary and had charge of the royal seal; the chamberlain, 
who was the king's chief auditor or accountant, and during the 
Norman period rather outranked the chancellor in dignity "in the 
judicial work of the country," being only less important than the 
chief justiciar; the treasurer also, who was the keeper of the royal 
hoard which was safeguarded at Winchester, and who sat at the 
famous exchequer table at Westminster to receive the accounts of 
the sheriffs. Other officers of the household were the steward, the 
butler, the constable and the marshal. These latter offices were very 
ancient, and under various names were common to all the Teutonic 
kingdoms, not only in England but also on the Continent. The 
steward, who corresponded to the major domo or mayor of the 
palace of the Prankish kings, was the chief officer of the royal 
palace; the butler, the Anglo-Saxon discthegn, was the caterer of 
the palace; the constable and the marshal, the exact division of 

^ Ang. Sax. Chronicle, a. n. 1087. 



170 NORMAN REORGAlsriZATION [william L 

whose duties is obscure, superintended the ordering of the feudal 
array and the fyrd. Under the Norman kings and their successors 
these more ancient offices soon became overshadowed by the four 
great officers of state, the chief justiciar, the chamberlain, the 
chancellor, and the treasurer, and sank into mere honorary titles 
or hereditary decorations, the ancient duties of the offices being 
performed by others.^ 

These officers were in constant attendance on the king. They 
might be called together to give him advice as a special council of 
state. As an administrative body they managed the 
CmHaReais ^-sscssment and collection of the crown revenues. They 
were also a high Judicial body, and could summon before 
them any cause from the ordinary shire courts, exercising all the 
supreme judicial functions of the ancient witenagemot or the 
contemporary great council. And inasmuch as such judicial 
business constituted necessarily a large and conspicuous part of 
their activities the body soon came to be known distinctively as 
the Curia Regis," while the larger body remained simply the great 
council. 

William was not more generous in conceding rights of taxation 

than he was in renouncing other powers of government. The 

English were not used to taxation: the obligations of 
Taxation 
under the freemen were summed up in the old trinoda neces- 

sitas, war service, castle service, and road service ; so that 
the crown legally had no right to revenues other than those 
derived from the royal estates, dues from markets and ports, and 
the findings of the courts. The successors of Ethelred upon one 
pretext or another had continued to levy the Danegeld, but it had 
always been regarded by the people as irregular and tyrannical, and 
Edward the Confessor, who once imagined that he saw the devil in 
the treasury sitting on the money bags, abolished the tax alto- 
gether. William, however, was too good a business man to allow 
himself to be troubled by any such visions as had disturbed the 
peace of the sensitive Edward, and began again to levy the Dane- 

1 For the development of the several oflRces of the king's household see 
Stubbs, C. H., I, pp. 372-385. 
^ In the reign of Henry I. 



1085, 1086] THE DOMESDAY SURVEY 171 

geld. The old haphazard method of rating which had been in 
vogue since Ethelred's day was abandoned, and by a careful survey 
of the kingdom a businesslike attempt was made to get at the 
actual wealth and resources of each region. This important work, 
the famous Domesday Survey, was begun in 1085. Com- 

Tlie Domes- 

day Survey, missioners were sent forth into every shire of the king- 
dom to collect information on oath as to the number of 
manors or townships, the whole number of hides, the names of 
those who held the lands, their value, the population free and 
unfree, and the number of cattle, sheep, and swine upon each 
estate. Englishmen cried out against the unheard-of inquest. 
"It was a shame," they said, "to pry into each man's matters." 
It does not appear that William levied the Danegeld directly upon 
his feudal tenants, but the various aids, tallages, and other inci- 
dents^ of feudal tenure which he might claim as lord, were quite 
sufficient to put the property of his bai'ons also within his power 
to tax as he willed. "Stark man he was and great awe men had 
of him . . . in his time men had mickle suffering and many 
hardshij^s. " "Many marks of gold and many pounds of silver he 
took from his people, some by riglit and some by mickle might for 
very little need. " As a result of William's methods it has been 
estimated that during his reign the royal income reached the sum 
of £40,000,^ an income which was enormous for the time and of 
which no other prince of Europe could boast. 

For the most of William's harsh measures, for his exactions 

and even his cruelties, he might plead the necessities of state. 

There was one measure, however, peculiarly Norman, 

TTic foTC^t 

andthe' which could have no motive save the king's personal 

foT'c^ij laws 

pleasure. His nature was temperate in most things, 
but his love of hunting amounted to a passion; "he loved the 
tall deer as if he were their father." On the continent kings had 
monopolized hunting as their own special sport, but in England it 
had been the right of any man to slay wild beasts on his own lands. 
William claimed this exclusive privilege for himself and those to 

^See p. 177. 

^Stubbs, C. H., 1,Y). 303. Later calculations throw doubt upon this 
estimate. 



172 NORMAN REOKGANIZATION [wiluami. 

whom he gave a special license and "forbade the harts and also the 
boars to be killed." Moreover, the existing forests according to 
his ideas were not sufficient; and in order to make "mickle deer- 
frith" he set aside vast tracts as forest the inhabitants of which 
were placed under special courts, the forest courts, and denied the 
protection of the common law. Of these forests the famous New 
Forest of Hampshire contained 17,000 acres. The forest laws 
were very severe ; the penalty for killing a hart or hind was blinding. 
For his forest laws William was censured more by the people than 
for the wasting of the north and west. 

It does not appear that William attempted directly to intro- 
duce into England the Norman system of landholding, or the care- 
fully graded hierarchy of the Norman feudal society. 
Sfemiaitm ^^^ *^® theories and forms of English holdings in the 
eleventh century were not so widely different from the 
Norman that the Norman lawyers found any difficulty in. explain- 
ing the relations of landlord and tenant upon the principles of 
Norman feudal law. English forms of landholding therefore, with- 
out any specific act of the crown, easily and rapidly assimilated to 
the theories and customs with which the Normans were familiar. 
For two hundred years in fact England had been preparing for 
this transition. The ancient free democracy had long since given 

way to a landed aristocracy who controlled the govern- 
Preparation •' • ,^ • • , , t 

for ment and made laws m their own interests. In many 

parts of England the old free township with its town 
meeting and elective reeve still survived; but the town was 
steadily giving way to another system of lordship, which so closely 
resembled the Norman manorial system that the name manor may 
be applied to the English institution without impropriety, just as 
the Norman term county is often applied to the old English shire. ^ 
The city as yet was hardly felt as a factor in English social life. 
At the time of the Conquest the whole number of cities did not 

exceed seventy, and most of these were small and poor 

Thecity , . . .„ .„ i • i 

without and altogether insignificant, even if compared with con- 

temporary continental cities. Commerce was corre- 
spondingly feeble and limited. Agriculture and the pursuits more 
>Stubbs, C. H., I, pp. 96, 296 and foll&wing. 



THE MAlSrOKIAL SYSTEM 173 

or less directly connected with the tilling of the soil were not sim- 
ply the only source of wealth; they were virtually the only source 
of livelihood. The great mass of the population, therefore, were 
of necessity engaged in agriculture, but agricultural society had 
come to know virtually only one form of organization, the form 
which lent itself most readily to the development of feudalism — 
the manor. 

By the manorial system the title to the land of the village, 
waste as well as cultivated, rested not in the free community but 

in a single lord, and conferred upon him civil and crim- 
rn^nor ^^^^^ jurisdiction with right to service from all who 

dwelt within his boundaries. The members of the 
manorial community, therefore, were not landlords but tenants. 
Their lands, moreover, did not lie in compact pieces as in the 
American farm, but in small strips scattered widely among similar 
strips belonging to fellow tenants and distinguished only by a 
narrow ridge of turf or by the furrow left by the plow. Cooper- 
ative cultivation, therefore, was not only advantageous but 
necessary. 

The tenant if free enjoyed the produce of his lands by what 
was known in feudal language as socage tenure, paying his lord a 

regular rent in money or in kind, or by performing 
Socage some labor service. These dues were fixed bv imme- 

tenure. J 

morial custom and the obligation to pay them descended 
with the land from father to son. 

Beside the free tenants there was also to be found upon the 
English manor another class of tenants of various grades, the mem- 
bers of which were known to the feudal lawyers as 
villains villains. In general they held their lands under more 

burdensome terms than the free tenants. These bur- 
dens might consist of labor on land which the proprietor of the 
manor had reserved for his own use, the demesne; or of dues in 
kind, or of dues in money. The villain, moreover, could not leave 
the bounds of the manor without his lord's permission. He must 
get permission also to marry son or daughter; to sell sheep or ox, 
or cut timber. His tenure, howcA^er, was fixed ; his dues could 
not be increased at the will of the lord; his marriage was recog- 



174 NOKMAK REOKGANIZATION [williamI. 

nized by law; he could not be torn from his family and sold like a 
chattel slave. He could also own horses and cattle; he could 
pasture his stock on the common and could cut firewood in the 
forest. The church insisted that he should have the full enjoyment 
of its holidays; it offered his son the advantages of a free educa- 
tion if he were worthy ,of it, and opened to him its highest posi- 
tions. As abbot or bishop or arclibishop he might become the 
companion and adviser of kings. 

In addition to the tenants who were directly engaged in the tilling 
of the soil there were others, both free and unfree, who held merely 
their houses with the surrounding plot of ground, with 
?(mants privileges in the common and the waste. Of such were 

the weaver, if the village were large; and the miller, 
who rented his mill of the lord and shared with him its profits. 
There were craftsmen besides, as the smith, who kept the village 
forge; the rope-maker, who kept the village rope-walk; and the 
armorer, who repaired his lord's armor. The parson also was a 
conspicuous figure in all phases of village life; likewise the clerk, 
who found a field of manifold activity in a community where, 
from the lord down, writing was an unknown art. Not least 
important was the reeve, a villain generally, who kept the accounts 
of the lord with the manor and saw to it that he received his dues 
from his tenants. 

Thus the English social system had already been established 

upon the principle of tenure by service. The o]d system of 

allodial tenures had passed away in England quite as 
IntToduction ,j a i 

of military completely as on the continent. It was not a difficult 

matter, therefore, to add to the English system the 

Norman tenure by military service, the characteristic feature of 

feudalism; and here also the way had been directly prepared by 

the special military obligations which Alfred and Edward the 

Elder had imposed upon the thane class, by which, if not the 

amount, at least the kind of service due from the freeman to the 

king had been graded to the wealth of the subject in land.^ It 

was therefore not widely at variance with precedents long since 

established by English kings that William should require of his 

iStubbs, C. H., I, pp. 210-213! ^ 



THE knight's fee 175 

great beneficiaries a quota of men-at-arms, knights, bearing some 
proportion to the importance and value of the lands which he 
conferred.^ Those who thus held land directly of the king were 
known as tenants in chief or tenants in capite. The tenant in 
chief was left to provide for his military family as he thought best. 
He might keep his quota of men-at-arms in his hall and feed them 
at his table, or he might settle each man-at-arms upon a small 
estate set off for him out of the domain lands and sufficient for his 
support. Such a grant was known as the hnighfs fee; 
KnighVs i\^q grantor was the lord; the tenant was his vassal. 
During the Norman period the amount of land neces- 
sary to constitute a knight's fee was not fixed; it generally varied 
from ten to twenty librates.^ The receiver of the knight's fee was 
to hold himself in readiness to come at his lord's summons, and 
thus enable him in turn to fulfill his obligations to the king. This 
subgranting of lands in military tenure was knows as suhinfe^ula- 
tion. Compared with the other custom of keeping the 
Suijinfeuda- men-at-arms in a body in the lord's hall, it would 
readily commend itself to the man who loved peace 
and quiet ; it also offered a better guarantee to tlie lord of the 
faithfulness of his military dependents. It became quite com- 
mon during the last years of William. It must not be con- 
founded with commendation, by which a free land- 
Cirnimenda- holder, in return for a promise of protection, surren- 
dered his lands to some powerful landlord and received 
them again on condition of rendering feudal service. Commenda- 
tion became very common in the twelfth century in the troubled 
times of Stephen's reign and greatly reinforced the numbers of 
the military tenantry. 

In granting a fief it was very natural for a lord of Norman 
birth and training to seek to protect himself and secure the f ul- 

lEound, i^. E., pp. 289-293. The whole number of knights thus 
exacted was far less than commonly represented. In the time of 
Henry H. the number did not exceed 5,000, or 6,000 at the most. During 
William's reign, it was undoubtedly much less. 

^ A librate was an estate which rendered an income of one pound a 
year. 



176 NOEMAN EEORGANIZATION [williamI, 

fillment of the tenant's pledges by using the forms and sanctions 

with which the feudalism of the continent had long made him 

familiar. In accordance with these customs the tenant 

Soms ^^^ required to kneel before his lord and placing his 

Homage. hands between his lord's hands, swear to be his 
Investiture. ' 

"man" — homage. The lord then girded him with the 
sword, and in symbol conferred upon him the estates — invesiitu7'e. 
The obligations thus created were personal and hereditary, but their 
characteristic feature was always the military service. If the 

vassal should ever refuse to arm and come at his lord's 

bidding, or if he ever fought against his lord the oath 
was violated and the right to the fief was forfeited — -forfeitiire. 

With the military service the vassal was also bound to attend 
his lord's court, submit to its jurisdiction, support its authority, 

and assist in its deliberations. On the continent the 
Court baron's men were exempt from the jurisdiction of the 

service. >■ •> 

king's court, and even from the duty of attendance. In 
England the old popular courts had been steadily undermined by 
the growth of the landed aristocracy, and by the wide extension of 
the dangerous custom of granting to thanes a private jurisdiction 
over their tenants under the terms sac and soc ; a grant which 

made the hall court of the manor, the conrt-haron, 
Sac and coordinate with the hundred court. Nevertheless the 

Soc. 

principle had survived that the shire courts, as king's 
courts, were entitled to a supreme jurisdiction over all the inhabit- 
ants of the shire; and the Norman kings were not inclined to 
sacrifice a principle so imiDortant to the royal treasury, or so useful in 
maintaining the royal authority. It is true that William granted a 

number of great baronies with full jurisdiction, known 
Uberiies^^ as lionors or ZiZ'er/ies,'^ and also freed the men of these 

barons from all attendance at the popular courts; yet 
such grants could hardly have affected the great body of manorial 
lords, whose men remained subject to the jurisdiction of the shire 
and whose courts-baron held jurisdiction only in feudal cases, 
that is, in disputes between tenants about land. And even in 
feudal cases, when a dispute arose between vassals of different 
'Stubbs, C. H., I, p. 431. 



FEUDAL INCIDENTS 177 

lords, the case could be tried only in the shire court. It is to be 
remembered also that while the great baronies enjoyed an exemption 
from the jurisdiction of the shire court, and were in fact pieces 
cut out of the jurisdiction of the shire, like the shire courts they 
were subordinate to the Curia Eegis, and when Henry II. began to 
send out the justices of the Curia to sit as his representatives in 
the shire courts these officers forced their way also into the courts 
of the great barons. 

Beside military service and court service the vassal was also 

liable to certain occasional exactions known as incide7its. Thus 

when heirs failed the tenant the fief returned to the 

incidents. lord — escheat. In case the deceased tenant left an 

Escheat. i-i ii- -i 

heir, when the heir took possession he was expected to 
pay the lord for the renewal of the grant the equivalent of a year's 

income from the estate — relief. If, however, the heir 
ivard^Mp were a minor the lord might retain possession and 

appropriate the income until the heir became of age — 
iuardsMp. A woman might ordinarily inherit a fief in default of 
male heirs, but the title passed to her husband, who regularly did 
homage for the fief and represented his wife in fulfilling the 
feudal obligations. The lord, however, was entitled to select the 
husband, but if the ward objected to the husband of her lord's 
choosing she might be released upon the payment of a fine. The 
same principle ,was applied in the case of a widow whose husband 
had died without other heirs. 

There were certain other occasions also when, under the 
gracious title of aids, it was customary for the lord to exact further 

sums from his tenants. These occasions were fixed by 
Aids. custom and were: (1) When the lord's eldest son was 

knighted ; (2) when his eldest daughter was married ; 
and (3) when the lord was captured in war and his body was to be 
ransomed- — an occurrence not infrequent in days of almost constant 
warfare. In addition to these ordinary aids the king might solicit 
from his vassals certain dona or gifts. The Norman kings also devel- 
oped a similar source of revenue in the tallaqe, a com- 
Tallage. ^ ^ 

pulsory aid levied at irregular intervals upon the 

demesne lands of the crown and upon the royal towns. 



178 ISrORMAISr REORGAKIZATION [williamI. 

Thus Norman military feudalism easily struck its roots into a 

soil already prepared, and in a few years shot up into luxuriant 

growth. The Norman king, however, remained a sov- 

Wiiuam a ereign after the national and not after the feudal type. 

national and = -^ J^ 

notafeudai gy English law whatever the rank of the individual, 

Jang. -^ ° ' 

whether ordinary freeman or thane, he remained always 

a subject and liable to all the duties of a subject; nor had William 

any thought of releasing his earls of foreign blood from these 

duties; or of allowing them to gather to themselves upon English 

soil such power as he himself exercised in Normandy as a vassal 

of the French king. In the twentieth year of his reign he 

sought to give expression to this fact of sovereignty in a way 

which no man might fail to understand. The Domesday Survey 

had just been completed, and upon the basis of its returns he 

summoned to meet him in the great plain before Salisbury "all his 

witan and all the landowning men of property there 

Thcnatuat were over all England, whosoever men they were, and 

Salialmry. & > j^ ■> 

required all to bow before him and become his men and 
swear oaths of fealty to him against all other men." Against 
this universal oath of allegiance no feudal oath Avas to be binding; 
no feudal contract was to stand which imposed upon the subject 
an obligation that interfered with his first duty to his king. 

Hardly less important than the relations which William estab- 
lished with the feudal society were the relations which he estab- 
lished with the church. In the middle ages church 
me^cinirch^'^ and state were hardly distinguished; the functions of 
the one so traversed the whole line of the activities of 
the other that at times the medieval state appears to be as much 
of a theocracy as the early Hebrew state. The state was the body 
of believers ; the head of the state was God or Christ ; the king 
was his vicegerent who had been ushered into his office by forms 
borrowed from the church, and who in the royal style, the rex 
dei gratia^ bore a reminder of the source and limitations of his 
authority. The heads of the church hierarchy sat in the national 
council and exercised a controlling influence in shaping the 
policy of the state ; they shared in the election or deposition of 
kings. They sat in the national courts and judged the highest 



1070-1088] WILLIAM AND THE CHUECH 179 

princes of the realm. The maintenance of discipline within the 
church, moreover, bore no slight relation to the preservation of 
order within the state. The lapse of church discipline was a cer- 
tain symptom of political or social anarchy. Eeligious forms, 
furthermore, marked all the stages of civil procedure. The litany 
and the mass were important features of the court room as well as 
of the coronation hall of the king. Thus no reforms could be 
more important or far-reaching than those by which William 
sought to bring the English church into accord with the ecclesias- 
tical system of the continent. 

William from the first had received a powerful moral support 
from the pope, and was therefore well disposed toward the papal 

system, and not at all inclined to favor the continuance 
chur^h^^^^^ of the "insular and barbaric independence" which the 
me with the English church had of late enjoyed. The deposition 
'ciiurciT^^^ of Stigand had in all probability been early decided 

upon, yet William had found it useful to retain him 
until the year 1070, when he was forced to make way for the king's 
old friend Lauf ranc, the Abbot of St. Stephens of Caen. About the 
same time the primacy of York, recently made vacant by the death 
of Eld red, was filled by the appointment of Thomas of Bayeaux. 
Other similar appointments followed from time to time, until by 
the year IO881 Wulfstan of Worcester remained the only bishop 
of English birth in the kingdom. These' new men were in full 
sympathy with the great contemporary reform in Europe which 
had culminated in the election of Gregory VII., and soon Justified 
their appointment by instituting similar reforms in the English 
dioceses, forbidding simony and insisting upon the celibacy of their 
clergy. The church courts were made independent of the lay 
courts, and discipline was enforced upon the laity as well as the 
clergy. The English monasteries were also compelled to conform 
to the stricter rules of the Norman abbeys. 

Yet if William thus showed himself entirely in sympathy Avith 
the spiritual aims of the church, he was careful to indicate the 
lines where the ecclesiastical authority ended. If he established 
the independence of the church courts he also removed the bishop 
from the shire court where he had long been a conspicuous figure. 



180 NORMAN REORGANIZATION [william I, 

Within the church, moreover, William would tolerate no authority 

rival to his own. No decree of a synod should be binding without 

his confirmation; barons or officers of the crown should 

Thechurch not be Subjected to the finding of a church court with- 

and the royal , i • • • t xi n • -, ^ 

authority. out his permission, in the case oi rival popes he 
proposed to decide which pope the Church of Eng- 
land should recognize, for he allowed no pope to be obeyed in 
England or papal letter to be received without his consent. The 
demand of Gregory VII., who at the time was vigorously pushing 
his ideas of papal sovereignty within the empire, that William 
should likewise recognize him as feudal overlord, he met with a 
fiat refusal: "fealty he had never promised; nor had his prede- 
cessors ever given it." Yet he recognized fully the spiritual 
headship of the pope and acknowledged the duty of the English 
church to contribute the "Peter's pence." 

The ideas of William were nobly carried out. The church 

rapidly attained new dignity and respect and began to exert a new 

infiuence over English life and manners. A new 

7,'r,sH//.s- (,/ cathedral was begun at Canterbury; the old cathedral 

Willian}'^ . . . 1 . 1 , . . 

church policy, ot York was repaired, ihe other bishops also imitated 
tlieir primates in the magnificence of the new struc- 
tures which they began, or the restorations which they instituted. 
Old episcopal seats, such as Lichfield and Sherborne, were 
removed from the country to the neighboring centers of population. 
After the year 1070 William had little further trouble with the 
English. There was still much grumbling; and many bitter 
words continued to find their way into secluded mon- 
sionofthe astery records, where patriotic monks sought to cherish 
the memories of the old England which was passing 
away; but the disastrous issue of the recent struggles, the fiight 
or death or apostasy of the English leaders and the failure of the 
treacherous Danes to afford the long-expected help had signally 
demonstrated the utter vanity of attempting to overturn the 
throne of the new king by force. 

William, moreover, soon began to commend himself to the sub- 
ject people by the very rigor of his administration. His ways 
were masterful and his measures severe, but the results were bene- 



NEW COIsrDITIONS OF EISJ-GLISH LIFE 181 

ficial. He was a hard drill master ; but England needed a drill - 

master, and the English were the first to recognize it. Life and 

property were protected as they had never been pro- 

Saiutary tected Under the native English kings. Even the 

rigor of ^ ° 

rCTw"™'* ^^^''^onicle is forced to recognize the "good peace that 
he made in the land, so that a man might go over the 
realm alone with his bosom full of gold nuhurt. Nor durst any 
man slay another, how great soever the evil he had done." The 
English, therefore, began quietly to accept the lot which they now 
knew they could not avert, and in a short time settled down to 
make the most of their new conditions. 

These conditions, however, could not have been very attract- 
ive at best. At the time of the Survey, as a result of the fre- 
quent revolts, fully three-fourths of the estates of Eng- 

Ncw condi- i. ' •) o 

tiomof land had changed hands, and in many cases where the 

English thanes had been allowed to retain their 
lands they had sunk into the condition of "subtenants of a 
Norman baron." When the land was at peace and plenty 
reigned the lot of the ordinary tenant possibly was not hard. 
But unfortunately the land was often at war, and famine and 
pestilence were ^frequent visitors. The lord lived in the great 
house on the demesne, but his people of alien blood, who 
regarded him with sullen aversion as an interloper and 
usurper, could feel for him and his nothing of that touching loy- 
alty which so often lights up the darkness of bondage. If the 
. lord, moved by sincere regard for his dependents, honestly sought 
to improve their condition, the chances were that he would be 
misunderstood and his measures misinterpreted. The absentee 
landlord also was by no means uncommon, for thousands of manors 
were held by William and his friends. In such cases the lord's 
agent, the hailiff, lived in the great house on the demesne, and 
saw that the reeves required the tenants to fulfill their obligations. 
The bailiff was selected for his thrift rather than for any goodness 
of heart, and knew well that his tenure depended upon the balance 
which he could show each year in his lord's favor. It was his 
interest to exact the last penny, and the lord was only too well 
pleased to see his returns roll up, to ask questions, or inquire into 



182 NORMAN KEORGANIZATION" [williamI. 

the condition of distant tenants. It was here that the Norman 
yoke rested most heavily upon the English rural population. 

If, however, the English were coming to he reconciled to the 
rule of William, the men who had come with him into England, 

who found themselves denied the privileges which they 
the^haront'^ ^^^ their kind were enjoying on the continent, were 

by no means inclined to accept William's system with- 
out a protest. In 1075 discontent passed into open revolt, 

when Ralph Guader, Earl of Norfolk, and Eoger Bret- 
Bfemg of g^ii^ ^jje goQ pf the Conqueror's old friend William Fitz- 

Osbern, Earl of Hereford, openly raised the standard 
against the king. But, although they had been secretly plotting for 
a year and William at the time was absent in Normandy, the revolt 
was a disastrous failure. The ordinary shire levies were sufficient to 
put down the rising, and in a very short time Roger was a prisoner 
and Ralph in exile. England was well rid of two such characters ; 
but unfortunately Waltheof, who after the great rising of 1069 
had not only been pardoned and received again into royal favor 
but had also been restored to his father's earldom of Northumbria, 
had become implicated in the affair, and was condemned to death 
by the witan. His death appealed powerfully to the imagination 
of the English writers, and the people long venerated him as a 
martyr. 

The rising of Ralph and Roger would really be of little impor- 
tance were it not the first of a series of armed protests on the part 

of the Norman-English barons against the authority of 

Significance ^}^q Normau-Euglish kings, which did not cease until the 

of the rising. ° *= ' 

reign of Henry II., when the old baronage was at last 
effectually crushed and the leaders driven to the continent. In these 
insurrections it is to be noted that the strength of the king lay in 
the support of the English nation, who needed no schooling to teach 
them that the tyranny of the king was far less to be feared than 
the tyranny of the barons, and who thus looked upon the king as 
their natural protector against feudal lawlessness. 

The relations of William to his own family were in keeping 
with his relations to his people. Sncli men are feared but never 
loved. William quarreled with his eldest son Robert, and drove 



1078-1087] DEATH OF THE CONQUEROR 183 

him from the kingdom. In Normandy the quarrel was renewed, 

and father and son met in deadly personal combat under the walls 

of Gerberoi. On the return of William from Nor- 

Quarrel with ,. , .,- ■ ,-, t • t -, p ■, •^ 

Prince mandy m 1082 he quarreled with his halt-brother 

Odo, who had abused the authority which the king had 
conferred upon him in his absence by oppressing the poor and by 
indiscriminate cruelty. William might have forgiven this, for he 

certainly knew Odo by this time, and from earlier ex- 
ocio^joss^**''^ periences knew what kind of report to expect from his 

regency. But Odo, who possessed all the ambition of 
his race, had been carried away by a foolish dream of securing the 
papal crown by force of arms, and to this end had taken advantage 
of AVilliam's absence to enlist men in England for his harebrained 
scheme. It was this which roused the wrath of William and 
brought him home from Normandy. And when none dared to lay 
hands on the sacred person of the bishop, William went himself, 
seized Odo, and packed him off to Normandy to be kept a close 
prisoner at Eouen until his own death. 

In the year 1087 William entered upon the last of his many 
wars. His foe was Philip I. of France, who had encouraged 

Robert in rebellion and had always been William's 
of William, enemy either secret or open. At the taking of Mantes 

William's horse stumbled among the embers of the 
burning city, and the king, whose body had grown unwieldy with 
advancing age, was thrown heavily upon the iron pommel of his 
saddle. He was taken to Rouen where he died after a loathsome 
illness. The priests and nobles who had eaten his bread left the 
body to the tender mercies of menials, who stripped even the bed 
of its furnishings and left the dead king "naked and lonely on the 
floor." "Death itself took its color from the savage solitude of 
his life." 



CHAPTEE IV 

THE ORGANIZATION^ OF THE KINGDOM CONTINUED 
THE ENGLISH CONQUEST OF NORMANDY 

WILLIAM II. lOS^-llOO. 
HENRY L lim-1135. 

It was the wish of the Conqueror that Eobert, his eldest son, 
with whom he had been reconciled before his death, should succeed 

him in Normandy ; and that William, his second son, 
William familiarly known as Rufus or the Red, should succeed 

him in England. He had also a third son, Henry, a lad 
of nineteen, who had been born in England since the Conquest. 
Henry, however, he put off with a legacy of £5,000 and some 
lands in the Cotentin. Robert was not satisfied with the arrange- 
ment which gave England to the younger William, and proposed 
to contest his candidacy for the English crown ; he was supported 
by the greater part of the barons, who loved Robert's easy-going 
ways and saw in William too much of the father's imperious nature 
for their liking. The very elements in the young man's character, 
however, which the barons regarded as a menace to their liberties, 
only commended him the more to Lanfranc and the church, and 
to all who had the good of the nation at heart. A war of succession 
followed and William, largely through the influence of Lanfranc 
and by the support of the English, succeeded in driving the friends 
of his brother out of the kingdom; chief of whom was his uncle, the 
old mischief-maker Odo, who had been released from prison after 
the Conqueror's death. Four years later William in his turn 
carried the war into Robert's dominions, and proposed to oust his 
brother from the duchy and secure it for himself. But the French 
king, Philip I. interfered, and brought about an agreement by which 
each brother renounced his claim to the domain of the other ; in 
case of the death of either, the survivor was to succeed to both 

184 



CHARACTEE OF THE RED KIKG 185 

dominions. Philip was not led to this neighborly act by any love 
for the Conqueror's sons, but simply by a desire to prevent Eng- 
land and Normandy from again falling into the same hands. We 
shall see this policy guiding the conduct of the French kings in all 
their dealings with the descendants of the Conqueror. 

In figure the new king was a caricature of his father. He was 
short, thick-set, powerful in body, with ruddy face and restless 

eyes, and ever liable to violent outbreaks of merriment 
of the^_ or anger. He had much of the ability of his race. 

Yet he lacked his father's greatness of character; he 
had nothing of his self-control ; was personally lawless and ever a 
riotous liver. He moved about the country accompanied by a rout 
of swashbucklers and mistresses, who shocked decent folk by their 
roistering revels, and who pillaged and plundered the people; "the 
poor man was not protected by his poverty, nor the rich man by 
his abundance." He abounded in inconsistencies — this uproarious 
king. He cared not a penny for the most solemn oath; saints and 
devils were to him so many bogies by which designing monks 
frightened children and silly women; and when men charged him 
with violating his coronation oath he sneeringly rejoined, "Who is 
there who can fulfill all that he promises?" Yet he had his code of 
honor. When he gave his word as a knight, he kept it inviolate; 
prisoners of war were safe in his hands, and when he granted a truce 
men knew that it would not be broken. He mocked at all things 
sacred; yet he was not without some latent respect for the powers 
of the next world. When in 1093 he fell grievously sick, believing 
that death was near he called for his confessor and made noble prom- 
ises of reform; but as soon as his strength came again he went on 
in the old way as graceless as ever. 

In spite of his personal lawlessness none appreciated better than 
William the value of a well organized administration. While Eob- 

ert allowed Normandy to fall into a condition of turbu- 
Fiamhard. lent anarchy William sought to strengthen and extend 

the vigorous administrative system of his father. He 
found an able instrument in Ealph Flambard, who had been 
originally a humble clerk in his father's chapel. The man was as 
able as he was unscrupulous. He had entered the church from 



186 NORMAlSr ORGANIZiVTION CONTINUED [william ii. 

purely worldly motives, and by making himself useful to the king 
had risen rapidly; secured the bishopric of Durham and finally was 
made chief justiciar. Here as head of the financial and judicial 
administration of the kingdom, he found ample scope for the exer- 
cise of all his powers. He grasped the possibilities of English 
feudalism as a source of revenue, and pressed to the utmost the 
advantages offered the crown by such incidents as relief and ward- 
ship ; nor was it an uncommon thing for the royal stewards so to 
impoverish a ward's estate in the interests of the treasury that 
when the land was finally turned over to the heir it was exhausted 
and all but worthless. 

The application of feudal exactions to lay fiefs was simple 
enough; but there was another large class of fiefs which by 

reason of the fact that they were held by churchmen, 
WilUttmll. ^, „ -^ 1 , . 1 . . 

and the were naturally exempt from such claims as those mci- 

clvtvrclx 

influeiiceof dent to relief, or wardship and marriage. But accord- 

feudal formii. . a -, ^ ■ -, i-t 

ing to feudal ideas the estates of a bishop or abbot were 
held personally of the king, and Avere obligated to military 
service just as lay fiefs; and to the thrifty justiciar there 
appeared no reason why ecclesiastics should be exempt from the 
other occasional but really more burdensome dues. The dead 
bishop could leave no heir, but the king might claim the income 
of the estates until a new incumbent was appointed. It was, more- 
over, a very simple matter, by ways well known to the crown officer, 
to delay such an appointment until it suited the royal pleasure to 
forego the profits of the lands in question. But even here the 
clerkly financier showed the king how to turn still another profit, 
since he might exact from the new incumbent a handsome gift 
after the manner of a relief. And as the Red King carried out the 
principle, it amounted to a virtual selling of the offices of the 
church, and was the source of much corruption. 

The most flagrant instance of AVilliam's violation of the rights 
of the church occurred in connection with the vacancy caused by 
Vacancy in ^^® death of Lanfranc in 1089, when the vast estates of 
Uanterbuni ^^® ^^® ^^ Canterbury were thrown into the king's 
1089-1093. hands. For four years William refused to appoint 
Lanfranc's successor, in the meanwhile aj^proj^riating the rev- 



1093-1096] ANSEL.M 187 

enues of this important see to his own wayward uses. In vain 
the great council protested; it mattered little to the king 
that church discipline languished and that the whole realm 
suffered; nor was it until the serious illness of the year 1093 
brought William to his senses that he consented to allow the 
revenues of the see of Canterbury to be applied again to their 
legitimate uses. 

The man chosen was Anselm, abbot of Bee, the friend and 
pupil of Lanf ranc ; already eminent among the theologians of the 

continent, and well known and loved in England. The 
^"ff^''«.„. wise old abbot, however, hesitated to incur the responsi- 
?oy3-fo9~ bilities of such an office under such a king. "He was 

a poor, weak sheep," he said, "to be yoked with the 
young bull of England." But those concerned were urgent and 
would take no refusal; they dragged the abbot to the king's 
bedside, and after literally forcing the pastoral staff into his 
reluctant hands hurried him away to the cathedral for con- 
secration. Upon his recovery William found that he had yoked 
himself not with a poor sheep but a lion. Between two such 
men there could be nothing in common, and it was not long 
before their differences passed into an open rupture. "Treat 
me as a free man," demanded the primate in words that 
thrill with the true English sjDirit, "and I devote myself and 
all I have to your service; but if you treat me as a slave, you 
shall have neither me nor mine." Such a man could not keep 
silent in the presence of the orgies which disgraced William's 
court; still less could he stand by while the king and his creatures 
plundered the church. A series of quarrels followed, until at 
last in a burst of fury William drove the faithful primate from 
the kingdom. 

It will be remembered that William had agreed to leave 
Normandy to Robert on condition that he renounce his 

claims to England. But in 1096 the crusading mad- 

Reunion of , . 

England and ness seized Robert with thousands of other princes of 

Normandy. t • i 

Europe. In William s shrewd and unsentimental 

nature, the wild enthusiasm which swept the continent found little 

sympathy; yet he was not averse to helping his brother off, and 



188 NORMAN ORGANIZATION CONTINUED [williamII. 

willingly furnished 10,000 marks^ toward his equipment in return 
for Normandy in pledge. So Eobert betook himself to the east, 
along with the host of restless and adventurous spirits who fol- 
lowed the First Crusade, while his duchy of Normandy was added 
again to the English kingdom. 

William had now reached his fortieth year. lie was still a 
young man, and no one could tell what would be the end of his 
career. In England he was all-powerful; none durst 
WiiKamii. defy him. He had compelled the Scottish king to re- 
new liomage. His barons had seized the lovylands of 
Wales and its southern coasts, and their castles crowned the hill- 
tops of the border. He was meditating the ■ conquest of Ireland. 
On the continent also his power and influence were rapidly extending ; 
when suddenly and without warning all these great plans were cut 
short and the end came. With a company of jovial companions he 
had risen from the banqueting table at Winchester and gone to 
hunt in the New Forest. In the pursuit of the game the party 
had scattered, bat when night came and they returned to the 
trysting place, William was not among them. Then came a peasant 
with a strange story: he had found the king lying in a glade with 
an arrow piercing his heart; the wide-open sightless eyes staring 
up into the heaven which he had mocked. How was it done? Was 
it the work of a clumsy hunter, whose braiu had been fuddled with 
drink; or, more likely perhaps, was it the work of an assassin who 
had taken vengeance for unrequited wrong? The question has 
never been answered. The pious saw in the mysterious taking off, 
the judgment of God. The body was taken to Winchester and 
there buried without religious ceremony and without sign of 
sorrow. 

At the time of William's death Eobert was on his way home 
from the Crusade. The success of the enterprise, in which Robert 
had born a conspicuous part, the popularity which had been given 
to it by its religious character, had done much to obscure the 

^ The mark was a theoretical denomination of money on account. 
Like the American mill, it was not coined. From the 12th century it was 
equal to 13s 4d current money. 10,000 marks, therefore, were equal to 
£6,666 13s 4d. 



HENRY I. 189 

unpleasant memories which lingered about the early career of Eob- 
ert. Hie was more popular than ever with the barons, and by con- 
trast with the brutal tyrannies of William, his good- 
'succession i^atured ways appeared like positive virtues. He had 
also in his favor the advantage of his early agree- 
ment with William. There was, however, a new element in the 
problem which neither William nor Robert had considered when 
they made their compact, and that was the national sentiment of 
the English people. The English had long since abandoned the 
hope of ever restoring the ancient royal line ; yet the soil was dear 
to them, and the fact that the Conqueror's youngest son, Henry, 
had been born in England, brought him a degree nearer than 
his foreign-born brothers. When, therefore, Henry, who had 
been of the fatal hunting party in the New Eorest, hastened to 
Winchester to secure the royal hoard, as the first step in making 
good a counter claim to the throne, the English welcomed him 
at once as one of themselves, and their cordial support gave to 
his elevation the appearance of a national choice. 

Henry on his part fully realized both the strength and the weak- 
ness of his position. He saw that it would not do to perpetuate the 
abuses of the Red King's reign, and that only by a wise 
poiicif^ policy of conciliation could he win the lasting support 

of the nation. Among his first acts, therefore, were 
the arrest of Flambard and the recall of Anselm. But the event 
which did most to establish the confidence of the people, was the 
marriage of the king with Matilda, the daughter of Margaret and 
Malcolm of Scotland, and the lineal representative of Edmund 
Ironside. Thus at last the nation could look forward to a day 
when the sacred blood of Alfred should again be represented in the 
kings of England. 

Of even more direct import, was a charter which Henry 
issued soon after his coronation ; the first formal acknowledgment 
by a Norman king of any "limitation on the despotism 
nf^Herwia^ established by the Conqueror." This charter was 
simply an amplification of the coronation oath; yet it 
was of great importance, for it gave to the nation an authoritative 
interpretation of the terms of the oath, made by the king himself. 



190 NORMAN ORGANIZATION CONTINUED [hbnrt I. 

In the charter Henry promised not to make profit out of lands of 
the church, either by taking advantage of vacancies or by selling 
its offices ; not to abuse his rights over feudal tenants ; that reliefs 
should be just and lawful; that heiresses should not be forced to 
marry against their will ; and that fines should be levied according 
to the nature of an offense. To the nation at largiB he granted the 
laws of Edward the Confessor as interpreted or amended by his 
father. The restriction which he proposed to place upon his deal- 
ings with his tenants, they in turn were to observe in dealing with 
their vassals. The coiners of false money also were to be pun- 
ished; but the forests were to be retained as his father had held 
them.^ 

In spite of the unpopularity of this last provision, the people 
received their new king with magnificent enthusiasm; and when 

in 1101 Robert landed at Portsmouth in order to con- 
support test the crown, the people rallied to the support of their 
tlieldng. ,t ^ 

knig as they had once rallied to the support ot Harold. 

The barons, however, held back, for they feared a strong admin- 
istration. The pliant Robert, whom nobody feared and who could 
hardly keep the clothes on his back from the thieving favorites who 
surrounded him,^ would be a king much more to the liking of the 
barons. Yet before the solid front of the nation Robert quailed, 
and was finally glad to renounce his claims upon the English 
crown in return for the cession of Henry's fief in the Cotentin. 

The retirement of Robert left Henry free to deal with the 
barons who had held aloof in the moment of threatened invasion. 

Robert de Lacy, Robert Malet, and Ivo of Grantmesnil 
ofRohaT(,f were stripped of their lands and driven from the king- 
^ejctime, dom. But greatest among Henry's tenants was the 

terrible Robert of Belesme, who held the important 
western earldom of Shrewsbury, and who had used his power to 
inaugurate a reign of terror on the border. Eorty-five charges of 
treason were brought against Robert, and when he refused to 
answer the king's summons to appear and make reply to the 

^Stubbs S. C, pp. 99-103, and Lee Source Book, pp. 125, 126. 
^ See the remarkable illustration of the results of Robert's good nature 
recorded by Will. Malmes. v. § 394. 



1102-1106] TENCHEBEAY 191 

charges, Henry straightway marched against him; laid siege to the 
great castle of Bridgenorth on the Welsh border ; and after three 
weeks took it. The fall of Arundel and Shrewsbury followed 
Bridgenorth, and Robert was forced to retire to his continental 
domains. His fall was hailed by the nation with unrestrained 
delight. "Rejoice, King Henry," the people shouted, "and give 
thanks to God, for you became a free king on the day when you 
conquered Robert of Belesme and drove him from the land." 

It would have been better for both England and Normandy if 
the quarrel of the two brothers could now have been dropped, aiid 
the duchy and the kingdom gone each their separate 
carrieciinto ways. But the barons of Duke Robert were not satis- 
fied and incited him to new intrigues against the king. 
Henry who had many loyal barons who held lands on the Norman 
side of the Channel and were thus exposed to Robert's tyrannies, 
believed that he had sufficient cause for renewing the war. For 
two years it raged without material advantage on either 
Tenchehray, ^\^q.^ b^t in 1106 Henry at the head of a Norman- 
, English army completely routed Robert's knights at 
Tenchebray. The battle was fought on the 28th of September, 
the fortieth anniversary of the crossing of the Channel by the 
Conqueror, and was regarded by the soldiers of Henry as a re- 
quital for the defeat of Hastings. Robert was taken and spent 
the remaining years of his life a close prisoner at Cardiff Castle, 
where he died in 1134. 

The salve to English feelings, however, could hardly atone for 
the new burdens which were imposed upon the monarchy as a 
result of the recovery of the Norman duchy. The con- 
LmMsvi'^ temporary French king was the wily Louis VI. , who with 
the keen insight of the statesman saw that the welfare 
of France demanded the separation of England and Normandy. 
For twenty-five years Henry wasted the strength of his English 
kingdom in maintaining his Normau borders against the hostility 
of the French, or in crushing the insurrections of Norman barons, 
stirred up by French intrigue. Yet Louis was no match for Henry 
either in war or diplomacy. He was both outgeneraled and out- 
witted. Heury secured the favor of the pope on the one hand and 



i92 NORM AN OEGANIZATION CONTINUED [henryI. 

of the Emperor, Henry V., on the other, to whom he married his 
daughter Matilda. He steadily extended his Norman domain at 
the expense of the feudatories of France; after the death of 
Henry V. in 1125, he married his widowed daughter to Geoffrey of 
Anjou, and thus prepared the way for the future union of the pos- 
sessions of the great houses of Normandy and Anjou. 

At home Henry found himself plunged into a struggle of 
another kind, but no less important in its ultimate issues. He 

had early given an indication of his good will toward the 
Atiseim^*^ church by the recall of Anselm. But the persecutions 

to which Anselm had been subjected by William Eufus, 
had not been without a direct influence upon his character as well 
as upon his theories of the proper relation of church and state. 
Moreover, he had spent the years of his exile at the Roman court in 
the very midst of the bitter struggle over investiture. The best 
men of the age felt that the time had come when the church 
should be freed from the control of the civil power. Only so 
could it keep its garments unspotted from the sin of simony and 
the other corruptions which had degraded its character and weak- 
ened its influence. Anselm had not o'bjected to investiture at the 
hands of the Red King; but coming at the call of Henry, fresh 
from the stirring scenes of the great Lateran Council which had 
formally forbidden lay investiture, he could not do homage 
to Henry or consecrate the bishops whom he had appointed. 
It was a grave question; none more serious had ever confronted 
king or bishop. The autocratic spirit of the king revolted against 
the implied denial of his indei^endence. "What have I to do with 
a Roman canon!" he cried. "No man shall remain in my land 
who will not do me homage." 

Yet Henry was no such blustering egoist as his brother. He 
fully valued the support of the church, and a breach with Anselm 

was farthest from his thoughts. Anselm on his part 

Thecompro- -^^^s no contumacious rebel, but was fully prepared to 
mise, 1107. ' J r r 

concede to the king all rights consistent with the 
spiritual independence of the church. He bad been the first to 
respond to Henry's call for troops against Robert, and his example 
had had no little influence in strengthening the loyalty of others. 



EOGER OF SALISBURY 193 

The controversy therefore, tliough earnest, was carried on with 
becoming dignity on both sides, and was finally adjusted by a com- 
promise: 'The election of bishops was to be henceforth in the 
hands of the cathedral chapters, but was to be held at the king's 
court ; the temporal rights of the crown were secured by the act of 
homage to the kin,g, by which the new bishop received his lands; 
the spiritual rights of the church, by anointing and investiture 
with ring and crozier at the hands of the archbishop; papal Juris- 
diction was not excluded, but no papal legate could come into 
England without the royal permission. ' ^ "Thus the church retained 
its independence as far as it was necessary for its moral influence; 
the king retained a supervision as far as it was necessary for the 
unity of the state." This arrangement, the only possible adjust- 
ment of the dual relation of church and state, was practically the 
basis upon which the long quarrel between church and empire 
was finally settled by the Concordat of Worms fifteen years later. 

Tenchebray had freed Henry's hands to take up again the work 
of organization.and administration at home, a work that pleased 
him far better than the rough and uncertain life of the 
SaiM)urii camp. In Normandy he had picked up a priest, known 
as Eoger the Poor, who once when Henry happened to 
be present had commended himself to the king by the rapid, busi- 
nesslike way in which he had rushed through the mass. A cool- 
headed, cold-blooded man of business was this Eoger, as void of 
sentiment as the columns of a ledger. Henry advanced him 
steadily; made him bishop of Salisbury, chancellor, and finally 
chief justiciar. 

Eoger was quick to see the weakness of the system which 
England had inherited from the past; but also quick to see how 
it could be adapted to the new conditions which confronted the 
crown. The magnum concilium, the old witenagemot, had changed 
Change in insensibly from a council of the grandees of the nation 
mZnwm"'^ to a council of the tenants in chief of the king. It 
cnnciiium. ^^g j^q longer summoned at regular intervals, as in the 
time of William I., and had long since become too unwieldy to 
attend t o the details of ordinary administration. Theoretically its 

' Gee and Hardy, pp. 63-6G. 



194 NORMAN ORGANIZATION CONTINUED [hknky i. 

functions remained nnchanged/but practically tliey were passing 
to the body of officials who composed the king's household, which 
from Henry's reign is to be known distinctively as the Curia Regis/ 
and which under Roger's management rapidly developed into a 
court of all work, with business as manifold and varied as the rela- 
tions of the crown to the people. His custom was to 
of Curia confine certain sessions to particular kinds of business 
Thus the members might be summoned to give advice 
upon state matters, the Ordinary Council of the king; or they 
might be summoned as a simple court to hear an appeal from a 
lower court, or to try a dispute between the great barons, or to 
hear a charge of the king against a baron. Questions pertaining 
to the royal treasury also formed no small part of the business 
of the Curia, and when summoned for the consideration of such 
business it was known as the Court of Exchequer. Later these 
several meetings differentiate into separate committees, and finally 
into distinct courts. 

The local courts also demanded the attention of Henry and his 

great justiciar. By the custom of granting private jurisdictions 

the jurisdiction of the old courts of the hundred and the 

Decline of shire had been steadily Contracted. Even lords who did 

local courts. ■' 

not hold their lands with special liberties, did not hesi- 
tate to take advantage of the natural strength of their position in 
the local community to enforce the fullest jurisdiction. Flambard 
also had indirectly contributed to the decline of the public courts 
by using them as a means of extortion, and the people had begun 
to abandon them for the private courts of the feudal lords as more 
likely to do them justice. 

Accordingly, soon after Tenchebray, Henry set himself to 
restore the public courts, and issued orders for the holding of the 

courts of the shire and the hundred "according to the 
^'^™y Joe I fashion in which they had been held in the time of King 
no8^'^' ^^""* Edward and not otherwise. " Yet so unpopular had the 

shire courts become, so suspicious were the people of 
the king's officers, that Henry had to repeat the order four years 
later and support it by fining those w^ho continued to disobey. 
1 See p. 170. 



HENRY AND THE COURTS 195 

Henry also sought to strengthen the local courts by sending 
out justices from time to time from the Curia Eegis to sit in the 

shire courts, thus emphasizing their ancient character 
circuit as kiug's courts. One such circuit, that of 1124, was 

famous for the hanging of forty-four thieves, which 
according to the Chronicle was a fair breaking of the record. Such 
commissions were as yet occasional and always special. Yet the 
way was indicated by which the "superstructure of Norman cen- 
tralization was to be placed over the groundwork of English local 
government." It was left for the second Henry to complete the 
work by arranging definite circuits and fixing the periods of visita- 
tion. 

In the growing power of the king's court we are to see the 
growing power of the monarchy. Nor was it simply that the king 

thereby had forged an effective weapon for overawing 
a source of the barous, but he had also developed a new source 

of income; always a primary motive at the basis 
of the judiciaL system of the Norman kings. ^ The fines and for- 
feitures decreed by the courts, gathered from the whole kingdom 
and swelled into a considerable stream by the time they reached 
the royal treasury, formed no inconsiderable part of its revenues. 
The increase of the crown revenues through the courts did not 
save the people from the burden of more direct taxation; "bitterly 

they complained of the manifold taxes which never 
Taxation 

under ceased. " "He who had any property was bereaved of 

Henry I. j i r j 

it, and he who had none starved with hunger." Bad 
harvests, sickness, or other misfortune, might not be pleaded in 
excnse for non-payment; the taxes were none the less regular, 
the crown officers none the less exacting. In 1109, when the 
Princess Matilda was betrothed to the emperor, an aid of three 
shillings per hide was levied not only on the baronage but on the 
entire population ; the first instance of the payment of a distinctly 
feudal aid by the nation. 

Beside Matjlda, Henry had one other lawful child, a son, who 
bore the family name of William and who by reason of the 

iStubbs, C. H., I, p. 425. 



196 NOHMAN" ORGANIZATIOX COXTINUED [heney I. 

strain of English blood which he had inherited from his mother, 
was exceedingly popular with the English, Yet he but poorly re- 
quited their affection. He was thoroughly Norman in 
William, his sympathies, and looked wdth contempt upon his 
mother's people. He is not an attractive character, this 
William, with all the vices of his father's family and with nothing 
of his father's tact or self-control. In 1120 he had gone with his 
father to Normandy, where the Norman barons had formally 
accepted him as Henry's successor. But on the return a drunken 
crew managed to run the ship, the "White Ship," upon a rock, 
where it sank with all on board. It has been the fashion of Eng- 
lish writers to lament the accident as a national calamity. It is 
true England might have been saved from the civil wars of the 
next reign. But then, some things are worse than civil war. 

The question of succession was at once reopened. William 
Clito, the son of Duke Eobert, was the last representative of the 
male line of the Conqueror. He was a young man, ap- 
ciito, death, pareutly of real ability, and withal of excellent character. 
Yet the long feud which he had waged with his uncle 
on the ground of his father's wrongs, made it impossible for Henry 
ever to accept him as his heir. The enmity of the two men was 
still further embittered by a new quarrel which sprang up on the 
death of Charles, the last count of Flanders. The French king 
supported William Clito who claimed the succession by right of 
descent from Matilda, queen of the Conqueror. Henry interfered 
and incited the Flemings to revolt, but was unable to prevent 
the succession. William's triumph, however, was of little profit ; 
he died soon after from the effect of a slight wound, which the 
rude surgery of the day had failed to treat properly. 

Henry in the meanwhile had set his heart upon securing the 

succession in England for his daughter Matilda. On January 1, 1127 

the great council formally acknowledged her right and 

Henry fixes swoYB to accept her as their future sovereign. She had 

xipon Ma- '^ ° 

tiida OS his been left a childless widow by the recent death of the 
successor. •' 

emperor, and Henry pledged his barons to find her a 
husband in England. But in 1128, without consulting the barons, 
he married Matilda to Geoffrey of Anjou, a bright handsome lad, Ma- 



THE LION OF JUSTICE 197 

tilda's junior by many years. The English lords felt that the king 
had betrayed them. The Norman lords hated the Angevins with 
the bitterness born of a century of border warfare. Yet Henry 
persisted and compelled the barons to renew their oaths to Matilda; 
and when in 1133 prince Henry was born, the name of the grandson 
was joined in the oath with that of the mother. 

Two years later Henry I. suddenly died in the midst of his 
activities. He had been a great king. He had his faults, the 

somber side of his nature ; yet they were not allowed to 
opHemr affect his public character. He was an indefatigable 

worker, and he exacted the same diligence and industry 
from all who served him. He reintroduced the lamp as an adjunct 
to the public service; for the daylight hours were all too few for 
his tireless energy. Like his father, he was cold and hard. He 
asked no man to love him; yet he expected his people to respect 
him and obey his laws. His severity won for him the title of the 
"Lion of Justice." The death penalty, which had been confined 
to the Forest Laws, was put into practice against thieves and rob- 
bers, "Great was the awe of him." "No man durst misdo 
against another." "He made peace for man and beast. Whoso 
bore his burden of gold and silver, no man durst say aught to him 
but good." 

Henry saw that the people needed security from the oppression 
of the barons and rest from war and alarm, and to this end he bent 

all his splendid energies. His hand was an iron hand, 
poiictj but it gave peace; and the achievements of the country 

during his reign, its material and intellectual prosperity, 
fully justified his policy. The Crusades had greatly stimulated all 
forms of commercial and industrial activity; vast sums of money 
had been released and put into active circulation. The close con- 
nection of England with the continent, the result of the union with 
Normandy, the peace which reigned in the Channel, placed the 
English nation in a position to secure their full share of this new 
life. English merchants extended their operations to Flanders, 
Denmark, Ireland, and Brittany, and even sought connections with 
the great trading and banking firms of southern Europe. The 
craftsmen of the lands south of the Channel, weavers and manu- 



198 NORM AX ORGANIZATION CONTINUED [henryI. 

facturers of various kinds, who dwelt where barons were accus- 
tomed "to go a riding" as their lust for war and plunder dictated, 
turned to the land of the peace-loving king, and in ever increasing 
numbers began to seek its shelter, and thus added not a little to 
the development of the wealth and strength of the middle classes. 

Henry was not unmindful of the significance of this industrial 
revival, and showed himself willing to encourage it by granting 
Chart of ^^^^J charters to English towns. The charters of Lon- 
towns. (Jqj^ a^,^(j Beverley are still preserved, and furnish valuable 

examples of the first achievements of English towns in securing local 
privileges.' 

The quickening of the moral and intellectual life of the people 

also kept pace with the political and industrial revival. This 

phase of the new life naturally found expression through 
Moral and j x o 

inuiiectuai monasticism; for the monastery was the commonly rec- 

ognized agent through which society sought to realize its 
better aspirations. It was the most important of civilizing agencies ; 
it was not only hospital, dispensary, and asylum; it was university 
and library and printing press as well. Here in bleak cells simple- 
hearted scholars toiled through weary hours, copying with infinite 
pains the writings of the past. The abbey, moreover, was the inn 
or hostelry of the period, and here the great folk of the age in their 
tireless passings to and fro were forced often to spend a night, and 
many a choice bit of courtly gossip fell upon the ears of the alert 
monk, to find its way ultimately into chronicle or more pretentious 
history. Men seemed to realize that stirring times were passing, 
that England was moving swiftly into a new era; and they sought 
to link past and future by leaving a fuller account of the present 
as they saw it. About the year 1120 the monks of Peterborough 
secured a copy of the old Worcester chronicle, that had come down 
from the days of Alfred the Great, and for thirty-four years longer 
continued the entries of this famous register. Henry of Hunting- 
don and William of Malmesbury, contemporaries of Henry I. and 
Anselm, also began their histories; such works show how seriously 
Englishmen were beginning to regard the actions of their public 
men. 

iStubbs, S. C, pp. 107-110. 



1117-1133] EDUCATION" 199 

Historical writing was only one of many ways in which the 
quickened intellectual life of the age sought expression. Henry 

himself was an educated man. He spoke English and 

French as a matter of course, and could use Latin like 
a clerk. He saw to it that his children also were trained in the 
lore of the age. His court was familiar with the forms and faces 
of famous scholars. His son, Eobert of Gloucester, was the par- 
ticular friend and patron of William of Malmesbury. At Beau- 
mont, on the northern side of Oxford, Henry erected a palace, and 
the neighborhood became a popular place for the gathering of 
learned men. Here, sometime before the year 1117, Thibaut 
d'Estampes gathered some half hundred or more scholars to whom 
he gave instruction in letters. In 1133 Eobert Pullin lectured on 
the Scriptures, and was soon after seconded by Vacarius, who 
began lectures on the civil law.^ Upon the informal beginnings 
made by such men grew up in time the noble group of schools 
known as the University of Oxford. 

In other ways also the monastery contributed to swell the tide 
of new influences which was moving England. The Oluniac 

reform had reached its height during the reign of the 
The ciuniac gj.g^ William, and his policy of appointing Normans to 

rule over English abbeys, as well as the policy of intro- 
ducing into England new colonies of Norman monks, had done 
much to bring English monasticism into touch with the monastic 
life of the continent ; yet, although the influence of these foreign 
ecclesiastics over the English clergy was very great, although their 
advent had inaugurated a new church-building era, the results 
of which in the vastness, ornateness, and splendor of individual 
structures surpassed anything which England had yet seen,^ 

^ The commonly accepted date, 1149, is doubtful. 

^ Of these structures the most famous was old St. Paul's of London. 
A building had been begun in 1083, but was burned in the great fire four 
years later. The rebuilding was undertaken by Bisliop Maurice and took 
forty years to finish. The dimensions of the completed edifice were: 
length, 720 feet ; breadth, 130 feet; height of body of church, 130 feet ; 
while the steeple rose to the magnificent height of 520 feet. According 
to William of Malmesbury, the building was capable of containing the 
"utmost conceivable number of worshipers." The structure survived 



200 NOEMAN ORGANIZATION CONTINUED [henry I. 

the fact that the new ecclesiastics were of foreign birth cut 
them off largely from the sympathy of the nation; nor was it until 
the generation of the Conquest had passed to the grave and the 
reign of Henry I. was drawing to its close, that their influence 
began to reach beyond the walls of chapter or monastery to affect 
the lives of the people in more direct ways. 

In the year 1128 the forerunners of the Cistercian revival began 

to reach England. This new order was an offshoot of the older 

Benedictine brotherhood ; it had been founded by Rob- 

The Cister- gj-f of Molesme at Citeaux in 1098 ; its members adopted 

cian revival. ' _ ^ 

the rules of Cluny and applied them unsparingly in the 
regulation of food and dress. The older monasteries had become 
very wealthy. Wealth had led to luxury, if not to riotous living. 
The monastery was lord of manors, with vassals and revenues; it 
furnished its quota of knights at the king's call. The abbot vied 
with bishops in dignity and power; he had his wine cellars; he 
kept his stables and kennels. There had never been lacking, how- 
ever, godly men who felt that all this fine living, this ostentation 
of wealth, was not in keeping with the ideals of the monastic life, 
and to such elements the apostolic simplicity of the Cistercians, 
their lives of voluntary poverty, and their deep religious zeal, voiced 
in the stirring appeals of men like Bernard of Clairvaux, the 
famous preacher of the second Crusade, came with peculiar power. 
The appearance of the Cistercians in England was the signal for 
the beginning of a wide-reaching religious revival. "Everywhere 

in town and country men banded themselves together 

Appearmice f or praver ; hermits flocked to the woods ; , . . anew 
nf Cistercians x j ' ' 

■in England, spirit of devotion wokc the slumbers of the religious 
houses, and penetrated alike to the home of the noble 
and the trader. " ^ Nor did the revival pass away in mere devo- 
tional excitement; it left a dee]? and permanent mark upon the 

many vicissitudes until it was swept away in tlie great fire of the year 
1666. Another building which also dates from this period, famovis in later 
years as containing the tomb of Milton, is the Church of St. Giles at Crip- 
plegate, the order for the destruction of which has recently (Jan., 1901) 
gone forth. 

1 Green, H. E. P., vol. I, p. 157. 



THE CISTERCIANS , 201 

nation and upon the age. A new class of ecclesiastics came for- 
ward who owed their positions not to political influence but to 
their reputation for "holiness of life and unselfishness of aim;" 
who sought to give practical expression to religious devotion in 
rearing hospitals and founding schools ; who did not hesitate to 
confront lawless barons, and who compelled even kings to listen to 
the pleadings of the national conscience. 

The churches of the Cluniac monks had abounded in decora- 
tions, in beautiful windows of stained glass; their services were 
equally ornate. The asceticism of the Cistercians 
cviUrcian extended to the service as well as to the luxurious lives 

architecture. 

of the religious orders. They despised ornament both 

in building and in ritual. Yet in the very simplicity of their 
buildings they attained a dignity and grandeur, a beauty of form, 
which the ostentatious Cluniacs missed altogether/ 

It was the custom of the Cistercians also in their desire to avoid 
display or ostentation to search for sites for their monastic settle- 
ments in some abandoned wilderness, some lonely spot 
as wool- in the forest, some waste bottom-land, where they 

busied themselves in the homely but practical service of 
clearing woodland or draining fens. It was . due to them that, 
beginning with the twelfth century, pasture-farming derives a new 
importance in the history of English industries. Large parts of 
northern England had been practically unoccupied since the days 
of the Conqueror, and these desolate regions afforded most favor- 
able conditions for the breeding of sheep. The Cistercians discov- 
ered that this form of industry promised most abundant rewards, 
and turned to it as their special avocation, becoming par excellence 
the sheep-raisers of medieval England, greatly encouraging wool- 
growing and all the accompanying industries. 

^ The famous Abbey of Fountains, near Ripon, said to be the finest 
ecclesiastical ruin in England, is an illustration of the Cistercian style. 
It was built in the fourteenth century. 



CHAPTER V 



FEUDAL REACTIOlSr AND THE RECONSTITUTION OF THE KINGDOM 



STEPHEN, 1135-1154 
HENBYII., 1154-1189 



FAMILIES OF BLOIS AND BOULOGNE 



BLOIS 

Stephen = Adela 

Ct. of Blois, youngest child 

Chartres, and of the Conqueror 

Champagne m. 1086, d. 1137 



Theobald IV., 

the Great, 

Ct. of Blois, 

Chartres, and 

Champagne ; 

d.ll53 

I 



I 

Stephen 
Ct. of Mortain 
and Boulogne, 
1125; King of 
England, 1135; 

d. 1154 



Henry 
Ct. of Cham- 
pagne and 
Troyes 



I 

Theobald V. 

Ct. of Blois 

and Chartres 



Henry 
Bishop of 
Winches- 
ter; Fapal 

legate 



Stephen 
Lord of 
Sancerre 



Ct 
d. 


BOULOGNE 

Eustace II. = Godgifu, d. 
of Boulogne Ethelred, 
(about) 1093 Redeless 


of 
the 



Eustace III. 
Ct. of Bou- 
logne, d. 
1125 



Stephen 
King of 
England 



=Mary, g. d. Godfrey 
of Malcolm of Bouil- 
and Mar- Ion, Duke 



garet of 
Scotland 



Matilda, 
d. 1152 



of Lower 
Lorraine. 
First 



Baldwin 
King of 
Edessa; 
after 
1100 
King of 



Christian Jerusa- 
King of lem, d. 
Jerusa- 1118 
lem, d. 
1100 



Eustace William Mary, Abbess Other 
d. 1153 Ct. of of'Romsey; children 

Boulogne 1159 succeeded of minor 
1154-1159 to Boulogne; impor- 
m. Deitrich tance 
of Flanders 



When the masterful Henry was no more it was hardly to be 
expected that the barons would show much respect for the disposi- 
tion which he had made of the succession. The barons 
sionof considered themselves specially grieved by what they 

regarded as the late king's bad faith, and felt no obliga- 
tion to keep the oath which they had made to the daughter and 
the grandson. Matilda, moreover, had spent much of her life 
abroad; the people knew little of her, and that little had left a 
most unfavorable impression. When, therefore, Stephen, the 
Count of Mortain and Boulogne, the son of the Conqueror's 
daughter, Adela, presented himself as the rival of Matilda, brave, 
generous, debonaire, and already well known and popular in Eug- 

803 



1135] UNFITNESS OF STEPHEN 203 

land, all classes welcomed him; the towns greeted him with 
enthusiasm; the great officers of Henry I. declared for him; and 
the clergy, headed by Stephen's younger brother, Henry, bishop 
of Winchester, entered upon an active campaign in his support. 
The Norman barons hesitated, not because of any lingering loyalty 
to Matilda but because they preferred Stephen's elder brother, 
Theobald the Great, the powerful count of Blois, Chartres, and 
Champagne. The prompt action of Stephen, however, forestalled 
any movement on behalf of Theobald; Theobald himself quietly 
acquiesced in what appeared to be the choice of the English 
nation, and the barons almost to a man went over to Stephen. 
So Stephen was crowned and not Matilda; in all England and 
Normandy Matilda possessed not a single open adherent. 

Stephen had hardly entered upon his first year before 
good men began to realize that a serious mistake had been 
made, and that he was singularly unfitted for the 
ste^iwn^ °-^ task which he had assumed. He had made many prom- 
ises: he would not use the church lands for gain; he 
would abolish the wrongs sprung of the overfree exercise of the 
authority of the sheriff; he would do away with the hated Dane- 
geld; he would surrender the forests made in Henry's reign; he 
would observe "the good laws and customs of Henry and Edward 
the Confessor. " "These things chiefly and others he vowed to God, 
but he kept none of them." He was as lavish with his gifts as 
with his promises; but he bestowed them not upon those who had 
first declared for him but upon those who held back and sought to 
barter allegiance for a price. Among these was David of Scot- 
land, who was an English baron by reason of lands which he held 
in England. He made a show of declaring for Matilda, invading 
England and seizing the northern castles, but allowed Stephen to 
buy him off by adding Carlisle to his possessions and bestowing 
upon his son Henry the earldom of Huntingdon. Such a policy 
on Stephen's part was suicidal; it whetted the appetites of others 
who saw that they had yielded all too readily to the new king, 
for subjects had nothing to fear from this overgenerous sovereign, 
who in rewarding his servants recognized treason rather than 
service. 



204 FEUDAL REACTION [stephkn 

Stephen's head was none of the clearest, and yet even he could 

see that things were going wrong, and that reaction was setting 

in against him. But he only added blunder to blunder. 

Ecirlv blu7i- 

ders of To strengthen himself he introduced an army of Flemish 

Stephen. 

mercenaries; no measure could have been more fatal to 

his waning popularity, which in the first place had been largely based 

upon his supposed opposition to foreign influence. But, as if this 

blunder were not serious enough, Stephen allowed the barons whom 

he regarded as his adherents to build and fortify castles of their 

own, where they gathered private bands of armed retainers and 

soon began to exercise over the people of the surrounding country 

all the brutal tyrannies which had made the baronage of France so 

justly feared and hated. Yet these concessions, while they 

alienated the people, failed to win the barons; for they were more 

than offset by the strange fatuity with which Stephen insisted 

upon raising certain base-born favorites to the high grade of earl; 

a policy which only roused the scorn of the older baronage and 

won for the king their lasting hatred and contempt. 

By 1136 Stephen's hands were full of trouble. The perfidious 

David had again taken up arms, while the powerful Robert, Earl 

of Gloucester, the half-brother of Matilda, had gathered 
eMiwar''''^ the barons of the west and south and also declared for 

Stephen's rival. Yet Stephen's cause was by no 
means desperate. He was a good soldier, and soon won marked 
successes in the west, where Hereford and Shrewsbury were taken, 
while his "good queen," Matilda, daughter and heiress of the 
younger Eustace of Boulogne,^ not to be confounded with the 

other Matilda, captured Dover. In 1138 Earl Robert 
ton. the was driven from the country and some of his garrisons 

Battle of the . -, -r^ • -, „ r. , , -■ i i , 

Standard, were hanged. David of Scotland also was beaten at 

1138. 

Northallerton in the famous Battle of the Standard, by 
an army of barons and yeomanry, whom Thurstau, the aged 
primate of York, had called together and dispatched under Walter 
Lespec to hold the road into Yorkshire. 

All in all, the first years of the war had gone well for Stephen ; 
too well, in fact, for his head had been completely turned by his suc- 

' See table at head of chapter. 



1139] THE BREA.K WITH THE CHtTRCH 205 

cesses, and he seized upon this moment for his fatal break with the 
church. Henry's justiciar, Koger bishop of Salisbury, was still 

the great man of the kingdom, and controlled all its 
Fhechiirch administrative machinery. His son, a second Roger, was 

chancellor; his nephew, ISTigel, the bishop of Ely, was 
treasurer; still another nephew was bishop of Lincoln. It is easy 
to see why Stephen should become jealous of this powerful family, 
who now for a full generation had managed the "jndicial and 
financial business of the kingdom." It is not so easy to under- 
stand the strange blindness which permitted him to break with 
them. Roger had many bitter enemies among the barons, but he 
had made them his enemies in the king's service. He and his 
nephews had built strong castles and were accustomed to go up to 
court attended by a magnificent array of retainers. This was all 
contrary to law, but everywhere the barons, the very vassals of 
Roger and his kinsmen, were building castles and arming their 
retainers. With vast revenues at command, therefore, and the 
dignity of the state to uphold, Roger could hardly do less. Be 
this as it may, in June 1139 Stephen suddenly arrested the justiciar 
and the chancellor, the two Rogers, ajid also the bishop of Lin- 
coln, and forced them to surrender their castles. The move was a 
double blunder. In the first place the "whole mechanism of the 
state at once came to a stand still." In the second place the 
church, which had been from the first thoroughly loyal to the king, 
raised the cry of privilege, and when Stephen stubbornly held to 
his purpose, the clerical leaders, headed by Henry of Winchester, 
M^ent over to the Angevin side. 

Thus Stephen, in striking down Roger, had done more than 
strike down a powerful family; he had cut away the ground from 

under his own feet. The royal income at once ceased, 

Seriomness n i • ' 

(>f Stephens and the king was compelled to resort to the shabby expe- 
dient of dishonest coinage. The national levies refused 
to respond to his call, and he was compelled to summon from the 
continent a horde of ruffian adventurers, who were willing to look 
to the plunder of the battle field and the looting of the houses of 
citizensfor their pay. In September the Angevin Matilda arrived, 
accompanied by Robert of Gloucester, and Stephen at last found 



206 FEUDAL REACTIOlSr [stkphbn 

himself in the field face to face with his powerful rival, but shorn 
of all the advantages which belonged to him as the crowned and 
accepted king. 

Matilda the ex-empress, however, did not succeed in winning 
the confidence which Stephen had squandered. The barons as a 

class were well pleased with the discord, and desired to 
ofanarcJui ^xalt neither Stephen nor Matilda, "lest if the one were 

overcome, the other should be free to govern them." ^ 
Henry of Winchester, who had been appointed papal legate a short 
time before the arrest of Roger, and who held a position of influ- 
ence in the church even greater than that of Theobald, the new 
archbishop of Canterbury, sought to act as arbitrator; but he 
was without military suj)port and found himself compelled to 
favor first one side and then the other. Castles soon began to 
blossom on every hill side; each with its independent lord, who 
bullied and browbeat his neighbors, spreading the terror of his 
name over the country for many miles around. And as "some 
would endure no superior and some not even an equal, they fought 
among themselves with deadly hatred," spoiling the fairest regions 
with fire and rapine. "They greatly oppressed the wretched peo- 
ple by making them work at these castles, and when the castles 
were finished they filled them with devils and evil men. Then they 
took those whom they suspected of having any goods, by night and 
by day, seizing both men and women, and they put them in prison 
for their gold and silver and tortured them with pains unspeak- 
able. " ^ "They were continually levying an exaction on the towns, 
which they called tenser ie (protection money), and when the 
wretched inhabitants had no more to give, then plundered they 
and burned all the towns, so that thou mightest well walk a whole 
day's journey, nor ever shouldst thou find a man seated in a town, 
or its lands tilled."^ Trade and agriculture were of course impos- 
sible; "if three men came riding into a town, all the inhabitants 
fled." "God and the saints," it was said, "were asleep." Devil- 
ish engines of torture called "rachen tages" were so cunningly con- 

^ Henry of Huntingdon, p. 227. 
2 William of Newbury, I, 22. 
^ Ang. Sax. Chronicle, a. d. 1137. 



1139-1141] DECLIlsrE OP MATILDA'S POWER 207 

trived, tliat when one was fastened about a man's neck, he could 
neither "sleep, nor stand nor lie, but had to bear all the weight 
of iron." Men were hung up over slow fires and left to suffocate 
in the choking smoke; they were cast alive into dungeons, swarm- 
ing with rats and toads, and there left to die and rot. 

In the years 1139 and 1140 Matilda and Robert succeeded in 
establishing themselves in the western counties. Stephen con- 
tinued to hold his own in the east. But in 1141 he was 
Matilda, defeated by Robert and Ralph of Chester in an attempt 

1139-1141. 

to rescue Lincoln, and himself fell into the hands of the 
victors. For a short time Matilda's cause was in the ascendant; 
Oxford castle was surrendered, and London submitted. In April 
Bishop Henry called a great council at Winchester and formally 
acknowledged Matilda as "the Lady of the English." 

There was now no question of Stephen's unfitness for his office; 
he had tried to rule and had failed. It was Matilda's turn to give 

evidence of even greater unfitness, if that were possible. 
TheZar^S^' ^^^ ^^^ Ethclred the Redeless in 'petticoats. She 
l^aWAas refused to listen to the counsel of Henry of Winchester 

and drove him from her by her injustice. She insti- 
tuted a wholesale confiscation of the lands of those who had sided 
with Stephen ; she seized the property of the church and disposed 
of it to her liking ; she attempted to extort money from leading 
citizens by open violence, and bluntly refused to grant the plea of 
the people of London for the laws of Edward the Confessor. The 
landing in Kent of the other Matilda, the queen of Stephen, with 
a force of Flemings at once brought on the reaction. London 
rose as one man; and "The Lady of the English" was hurled from 
her high state even more rapidly than she had risen. Then she 
turned her wrath upon Bishop Henry and sought to take him in 
his own castle. But Stephen's queen, with her Flemings and the 
men of London, compelled her to raise the siege and withdraw. 
Robert of Gloucester was taken in endeavoring to cover the retreat. 
The capture of Robert was the beginning of the end as far 
as the dynastic struggle was concerned. In the autumn he was 
exchanged for Stephen, but the fall of Oxford the next year ended 
the forward movement of Matilda's party. For five years longer 



208 Jj-EUDAL REACTION [stephen 

she remained in England ; but both sides were now so exhausted 

that neither could make headway against the other, or chain the 

turbulent spirits which they had unloosed. Geoffrey de 

ckjnastic Mandeville, who had been appointed earl of Essex by 
struggle. -i • -< 

both claimants, yielded to neither and betrayed either as 
it suited him. The earl of Leicester and his brother, the count 
of Meulan, held the midlands, but proposed to be neutral. North 
England was held by the Scottish king. So matters stood, until 
the capture of Ralph of Chester in 1146, followed by the death of 
Eobert of Gloucester the next year, finally discouraged Matilda 
and she withdrew to the continent. 

After the departure of Matilda, the war was left to burn itself 
out in local partizan strife; the preaching of a new Crusade drew 

off some of the more restless spirits; the clergy slowly 
ofthe^orm ^'©covered their influence and the king again guaranteed 

them protection. Thus gradually the storm subsided; 
but England was sinking hopelessly into the hands of the feudal 
baronage. Even Stephen, rash and headstrong as he was, shrank 
from stirring up such a new war as would be necessary to force 
upon his barons the system which had prevailed under his prede- 
cessors. 

While Matilda had been thus pursuing her dubious way in Eng- 
land, her husband, Geoffrey Plantagenet, had with better success 

been reducing the castles of Normandy. By 1144 he had 
strengmof gained control of the entire duchy and was recognized 
Anjoiif^ by Louis VII. of France as duke of Normandy; six years 

later he turned it over to Prince Henry, then in his 
seventeenth year. In 1149 the young duke appeared in England,^ 
but little came of his visit, save a knighting at the hand of his 
great-uncle, David of Scotland. His power on the continent, how- 
ever, continued to increase. In 1151 Geoffrey died, and Henry 
became also lord of Anjou, Maine, and Touraine. In the following 
spring he married Eleanor, the divorced wife of Louis VII. , and 
secured her magnificent heritage, Aquitaine, Poitou, Saintonge, and 
Limousin. Henry had thus become lord of all western France, 

' He had visited England before in 1142 and in 1147. 



THE 
DOMINIONS 




1151] REl^rEWAL OF THE STRUGGLE 209 

Brittany alone excepted. He was the mightiest subject in the 
west. 

The jealousy of Louis VII., Henry's overlord, was thoroughly 
aroused. He hated Henry because he had married Eleanor 

and won her lands. He feared him because of his 
of the power. , He encouraged Stephen to allow his eldest 

son Eustace to join in an attempt to wrest Normandy 
from Henry's hands. A first attempt had been made in 1151 
before the death of Duke Gleoffrey. The second attempt, made after 
the marriage of Eleanor, fared no better, although Louis was sup- 
ported by Henry's younger brother Geoffrey of Anjou, Theobald 
v., count of Blois, nephew of Stephen, and others of Henry's vas- 
sals. Henry drove back the French king, brought his own vassals 
to terms, and then turned to carry out the invasion of England for 
which he had been planning for two years. 

In England matters were drifting from bad to worse. The 
church was now thoroughly involved in the quarrel, and was as 

seriously rent asunder as the baronage. Theobald, the 
thl^wype^^^ archbishop of Canterbury, had sided with the Angevins, 

while Henry Murdoc, recently won by Stephen, had 
been made archbishop of York. Appeals to Rome, virtually 
unknown during the early Norman period, had become absurdly 
frequent. For every petty quarrel men hastened off to Rome to 
get the judgment of the pope, and in January 1151 Stephen sent 
Archbishop Henry to get the papal sanction for the immediate 
coronation of Eustace. The coronation of the son before the death 
of the reigning king had been common enough in France but had 
been heretofore unknown in England. It was Stephen's last hope. 
The ground was sinking beneath him. Even the barons of his own 
making were growing weary of the strife and he felt that since he 
could not depend upon them, a coronation at the command of the 
pope might furnish a respectable claim for Eustace. But the pope 
had no wish to see the confusion continue ; Stephen, moreover, had 
sinned too grievously against the church to be easily forgiven. 
The pope, therefore, not only refused to sanction the consecration 
of Eustace, but forbade the English bishops to have anything to 
do with the proposed ceremony. Armed with this, prohibition 



210 FEUDAL REACTION [Stephen 

the bishops refused all the solicitations of Stephen. Stephen 
became furious and threatened them with personal violence. A 
few apparently indicated their willingness to submit; the rest 
refused ; Theobald retired to the continent. Stephen then once 
more drew the sword, took Newbury and advanced upon Walling- 
ford whose garrison through all these years had refused to recog- 
nize any other lord save Matilda and her son. 

It was at this juncture that Henry reached England. His 

army was small/ but many men were hardly needed; all classes 

were disgusted with the senseless tyranny of Stephen. 

Henry's ^ ^ ^ j. 

fourth ap- The Augevin garrison at Wallingford was saved ; Malmes- 
EiKjiand, bury fell; other places as Warwick, Leicester, Stamford, 

and Nottingham either were taken outright or their 
garrisons declared for Henry of their own accord. 

At this point the sudden death of Eustace gave an entirely 
new aspect to the struggle by removing Stephen's last hope of 

securing the crown in his own family. A plan of com- 
Emtace, promise had already been proposed, by which Henry 

should withdraw and Stephen should recognize him as 
his heir. As long as Eustace lived, Stephen had been loath to 
yield, but there could be no reason now for holding out longer. 
He had other children, but on account of their youth they had not 
been identified with the struggle and had no following. Accord- 
ingly Stephen determined to accept terms which promised him a 
whole kingdom for the rest of his life in lieu of the fragment 
which then acknowledged him. 

The terms of the treaty are of importance because better than 
the rhetorical effusions of any chronicler, they present the results 

of "this period of unprecedented general misery" and 

Thepeaceof . , / „ ,^ '■ . „ ° ^, . » , 

Wallingford, the longing ot the nation tor peace, it was m tact a 
definite scheme of reform, an expression of the desire of 
all parties to get back again to the order and unity which had pre- 
vailed under Henry I. (1) The royal rights were to be resumed 
by the king. (2) All estates were to be returned to the lawful 
owners who had enjoyed them in King Henry's day. (3) The 
"adulterine" or unlicensed castles which had been erected during 

^ 140 men-at-arnas and 3,000 foot. Ramsay, II, 448. 



1154] DEATH OF STEPHEN 211 

Stephen's reign to the number of eleven hundred and fifteen, were 
to be destroyed/ (4) The king was to restock the desolate 
country, employ the husbandmen, and as far as possible restore 
agriculture and replace the flocks and herds in the impoverished 
pastures. (5) The clergy were to have their peace and not be 
unduly taxed. (6) The jurisdiction of the sheriffs was to be 
revived and men were to be placed in the office who would not 
make it a means of gratifying private friendship or hatred, but 
would exercise due severity and give every man his own; thieves 
and robbers were to be hanged. (7) The bands of mercenary sol- 
diers were to be broken u]) and sent home; the Flemings to be 
relegated to their workshops, "there to labor for their lords, instead 
of exacting labor as lords from the English." (8) The general 
security was to be maintained, commerce to be encouraged, and a 
uniform coinage struck. (9) Stephen was to retain the crown 
during the rest of his life, but Henry was to succeed him.*^ 

The negotiations were begun at Wallingford in the summer, but 
were not concluded until the November following at Westminster. 

On the 13th day of the new year Henry received the 
stevhen 1154 ^^^^ ^^ ^^® barons at Oxford, and in Lent returned to 

the continent. The long struggle of fourteen years was 
at last ended. Stephen had pledged himself to restore the king- 
dom; but even at his best he would have been unfit for such a task. 
He was now, moreover, a broken man; the spirit was gone out of 
him; and a few months after the return of Henry he passed away, 
leaving the great part of the work of restoration still undone. 

Henry had just reached his twenty-first year. He was of square 
frame, in later years inclining to the stout, with fiery face, short 

red hair, bull neck, bowed legs; as restless and active 
opHenrif' ^^ ^® ^^^ strong. He was temperate in food and drink ; 

careless in dress; well versed in books; talkative, and 
inquisitive, yet cautious; coarse in his tastes and unscrupulous. 
He was one of the few monarchs of his time who cared for power 
more than for glory or pleasure. His entire thought he devoted 

1 This has been the commonly accepted estimate but the number prob- 
ably did not exceed a third of this. 
2Stubbs, C. H. I, p. 361. 



212 FEUDAL REACTIOJSr [henrt il. 

to business, and took delight in looking after the smallest details 
himself and in experimenting witii different methods. In matters 
of religion he showed a startling irreverence, mingled with curious 
superstition. He would amuse himself during mass by scribbling 
or whispering, occasionally breaking out into paroxysms of ungov- 
ernable profanity ; yet he could be terrified by an accusing con- 
science and at times sink into depths of hopeless remorse. 

Energy, force, the love of order, and the masterfulness of both 
races were concentrated in the fiery blood of this Norman- 
Angevin; and he had need of it all. His first task was 
of the to take up the work of restoratioji and reorganization as 

Stephen had left it. The foreign mercenaries were 
sent home. The destruction of the illegal castles continued. 
The new earls who had been set up by Stephen and Matilda were 
deposed, and the royal domains which had been frittered away 
when the rivals were bidding against each other for support, were 
taken again "into the king's hand." The king of Scotland was 
forced to give up Northumberland and Cumberland. If a baron 
refused to give up his lands or renounce his privileges, as in the 
case of William of Aumale who had intrenched himself in the north 
at Scarborough castle, the king promptly took the field and 
brought the rebel to terms. So effectively in short did Henry set 
his face against the further continuance of feudal practices, 
private warfare or private coinage or private justice, that in an 
incredibly short time the work was finished and the last traces of 
the anarchy which had disgraced Stephen's reign, had been 
stamped out. 

Henry then set himself to restore the administrative system of 
the kingdom. The great council was revived and once more 
honored by the confidence of the king. The Curia 
of the system Regis was also restored and strengthened. Able men 
were selected for office ; Robert, earl of Leicester, and 
Richard de Lucy became justiciars; Becket became chancellor and 
Nigel of Ely, a nephew of the great Roger of Salisbury, treasurer. 
The revenues soon increased threefold. The sheriffs were required 
to come to the exchequer twice a year in order to render account 
for the collection of taxes and the management of the king's 



THE EXCHEQUER 



213 



estates. Their accounts were kept by 
means of "tallies" or notched sticks. 
These "tallies" were issued in duplicate, 
the exchequer keeping one, the sheriff 
carrying the other away in his wallet. In 
the exchequer chamber the officers sat 
about a dark covered table and the ac- 
counting was carried on before them in 
full view, by means of discs or counters. 



£ '£ £ £ 

10.000.1.000, 100. 20. 




12 3 4 5 6 7 

DIAGRAM OP THE EXCHEQUER TABLE.2 

The resemblance of the operation to the 
game of chess probably suggested the 
name, exchequer. It was a primitive 
method, but one which could be easily 
understood by all, and was in fact nec- 
essary when sheriffs generally could neither 
read nor write. 

The most striking figure at Henry's 
council-board was his chancellor, Thomas 
a Becket. Thomas was born of one of 
the IN'orman families, which had recently 



EXCHEQUER 
T.\r>LIKS, OF 
KEIGX OF 
HENRY III.l 



^ From Introduction to Pipe Rolls — The large notches on left side of 
tallies represent pounds. The smaller notches on the right side represent 
shillings, the lines pence. 

'^ From Introduction to Pipe Rolls — 1-8, white wands, or chalk-lines, 
marking the columns of account, a a, terminal spaces, before which sat, 
on the right, the chancellor and his suite, on the left, the sheriff and suite. 



214 FEUDAL REACTION [henry II, 

established itself in England. His parents had brought him up 
with great care, and sent him to the continent to complete his 

education. He had then returned to England and en- 
BeckeT^ tered the household of Archbishop Theobald, where he 

rose rapidly.^ He had also attracted the attention of the 
young king and with the approval of Theobald was made chancellor. 
He was some fifteen years the senior of Henry, and as long as Thomas 
remained in the chancellorship, the two were congenial spirits with 
but "one heart and one mind." They were often seen together, 
riding or hunting ; now bent in earnest converse at the council-board, 
and again making the passer-by stare, as they tumbled each other in 
rough horse-play. Thomas unlike the king was tall and spare, dark 
haired, but fair skinned and somewhat pale. His countenance was 
pleasing, his manners blithe and winning, and with no suggestion 
of the ascetic. He took pride in having the most sumptuous table 
in England, and was exceedingly fond of fine apparel, upon which 
the king loved to chaff him. He was strong of limb and loved 
vigorous hand-play. Although a churchman, he led a band of 700 
men-at-arms at Toulouse and overcame a French knight in single 
combat. His speech was quick and frank, yet halting somewhat 
when under excitement. "In youth he had been known as a good 
chess-player, a bold rider, and a keen sportsman. He hated liars 
and slanderers. He was a kind friend to dumb brutes and to all 
poor and helpless folk." 

As chancellor, Thomas identified himself thoroughly with 
Henry's schemes of reform. When the war of Toulouse was 
undertaken in 1159, it was Thomas who suggested to Henry the 
expedient of levying the scutage. The object of the war was to 
enforce the claims of Queen Eleanor to the suzerainty of Toulouse. 

Henry could hardly compel his English tenants to 
'rmo^ule^^ accompany him on a war of this kind over sea. It was 
fm '^'^"^"^^' proposed therefore to allow a kind of commutation of 

service for a money payment of two marks for each 
knight's fee; an expedient by no means unknown before this 

' It is said that he was at Rome when Henry Murdoc appeared to pre- 
sent Stephen's case and that it was largely due to his influence that the 
pope decided against the coronation of Eustace, see p. 209. 



1159-1162] THOMAS A BECKET 215 

period. This was the famous scutage and was paid not by the 
great barons/ but by those of the king's tenants who did not have 
large estates, and by under-tenants who could ill afford to leave their 
farms for so long -a time. The move was certainly a wise one. 
The holders of small fees were given to husbandry rather than to 
war, and it was in the king's interests, especially after the dis- 
tractions of the recent civil wars, to encourage this class of his 
tenants in the pursuits of peace, rather than to tear them away to 
engage in the hazards of a foreign campaign. The additional rev- 
enue of the crown could also be turned to practical account in 
enabling the king to draw to his standard the professional sol- 
diers who were ever floating about Europe and were far more 
efficient in this kind of warfare than men who left their homes 
with reluctance, and who had little heart for the hardships of a 
war in which they took no interest. From Henry's day the 
scutage becomes more common; it foreshadows a radical change 
in the methods of medieval warfare. 

Unfortunately for Thomas, Henry's scheme of reform included 
the church as well as the civil organization. The Conqueror had 

carefully separated the two iurisdictions : and the recent 
Thomas, j i. o ^ 

archbvihop, anarchy had taught tlie clergy the full value of their 

special privileges. When therefore Henry proposed to 
bring the whole state under one system of law, he found a serious 
obstacle in the jealousy with which the clergy regarded any innova- 
tion which threatened to invade their peculiar immunities. In 
1161 the venerable Theobald died, and Henry proposed to put at 
the head of the English church none other than his fine chan- 
cellor. Some of the barons remembered the scutage and grumbled ; 
but the obsequious churchmen regularly elected Thomas and con- 
secrated him to the vacant see of Canterbury. 

Never was king more deceived in his man. Becket felt the 
hollowness of his past life in the presence of the new 

responsibiii- dignity to which the king; proposed to raise him. i on 

ties upfm . o i x 

Thomas's are choosing a fine dress," he exclaimed "to figure at 

characte7\ 

the head of your Canterbury monks." He felt too the 

weight of the new responsibility which he must face, and shrank 
^ Baldwin, Scutage and Knighfs Service in England, pp. 19-57. 



216 FEUDAL REACTION"' [henrt ii. 

from it; "Whoever is made archbishop," he said, "must quickly 
give offense either to God or to the king." These protestations 
were the expression of no sham humility on Thomas's part; 
but the voice rather of a deeper nature, which through all these 
years had been in slumber, which Henry had never recognized and 
which possibly Thomas himself had but vaguely comprehended. 
It was this deeper nature, so unlike the gay worldling of the 
court, that awoke under unwonted burdens, and made Thomas as 
completely a man of the church as he had been before a man of 
the world. He at once resigned his chancellorship, much to the 
disgust of the king; renounced the vain amusements of the court 
and changed his whole mode of life. The same absorbing care 
which he had bestowed upon his civil office, he now gave to his 
new duties, relieving the poor and caring for the sick. N'or 
in his solicitude for the proper ministration of his office did 
he neglect his private religious duties. Yet of this inner life, men 
saw little; for Thomas was a magnificent archbishop. His dress 
was still of the richest, his tables as of yore groaned under the 
load of good things; but the guests had changed, instead of the 
gay butterflies of the court, the poor now sat down with Thomas. 
However, few understood him; even in his charities men saw the 
same ostentation, that had once expressed itself in fine clothes. 
But when it was all over, and the assassins had fled from the pres- 
ence of their victim, and the terrified monks came creeping back 
into the dark chancel and took up the mangled corpse, then they 
knew this man. "Beneath the splendid robes they found the hair 
cloth, and saw on the body the stripes of daily secret penance." 

It was not long before the king discovered the true nature of 
his new archbishop. The next year after the election the king, at 

a council held at Woodstock, proposed to enroll as a 
of Woodstock, part of the royal revenue, the two shillings which the 

sheriffs were accustomed to take from each hide in pay- 
ment of their services.^ To this Thomas protested, and his 
vigorous words certainly were ominous of coming storm. "We 
will not give this money as revenue," he declared, "but if the 
sheriffs and servants and ministers of the shires shall perform their 

^Not Danegeld. See Round, F. E., p. 497 and following. 



1163] THE COURTS AND THE CLERGY 217 

duties as they should, we will not be lacking in contributing to 
their aid." Becket was right and Henry had to yield. 

The issue between church and state, however, was not to be 
joined upon the taxation of church lands, but upon the broader 

question of the proper jurisdiction of the church courts. 
opLr^Mction ^^^r since the church courts had been separated from 

the temporal courts, it was uncertain just where lay 
the boundaries which marked their respective jurisdictions. 
The system of canon law also, which had been introduced into the 
English church courts during the past century, had given rise to 
methods of procedure, very different from those in use in the 
secular courts. Appeals to Eome were encouraged and the num- 
ber had greatly increased. Most serious, however, was the custom 
of trying a "criminous clerk" in the court of the bishop, where if 
found guilty, he had little to fear save the imposition of a penance, 
or imprisonment in a monastery or a fine. At most he would only 
be unfrocked and deprived of the privileges of his order. In theory 
he should be degraded and handed over to the civil court; but the 
churchmen were so jealous of their own independence, that they 
were inclined to spare even a notorious criminal, rather than call 
upon the laity to punish one of their members. The king's justiciars 
alleged that since the beginning of Henry's reign "no less than 
one hundred murderers and innumerable thieves and robbers" had 
in this way escaped punishment. 

Henry with his characteristic bluntness went straight to tlie 
point, and proposed that henceforth clerical criminals should be 

tried by the secular courts just as ordinary persons, and 

Thomas's j r ^ 

imjposed that while they might be degraded by their bishops, they 
should be punished by the secular arm with the severity 
which the law prescribed. Thomas acknowledged the abuse, but 
claimed that the remedy was to be sought, not in sacrificing the 
independence of the church, but by greater care in receiving those 
who were presented for orders. And this he, as archbishop, had 
already conscientiously set himself to doi 

In 1163 the question was brought to a direct issue by the case 
of Philip de Broi, who was accused of a capital crime but escaped 
by claiming benefit of clergy. The impetuous king would not be 



218 FEUDAL EE ACTION [ Henry II. 

put off longer and in a great council held at Westminster, put the 

direct question to the bishops : Would they abide by the customs 

Councils of which prevailed in the time of Henry I. ? The churchmen, 

Westminster however, were wary and would not commit themselves, so 
and Claren- ' J ' 

^"^''- that the discussion was renewed again at Clarendon in 

the following January when Becket finally agreed to "obey the cus- 
toms of the realm." Henry then ordered the Justiciar, Richard 
de Lucy, to present a list of these customs; in nine days the report 
known as the Constitutions of Clarendon was ready/ 

The discussion, however, had evidently drifted beyond the dis- 
posal of criminous clerks, and taken in the whole series of ques- 

^ ... .. tions raised by the ill-defined relations of church and 

Constitutions -J 

of Clarendon, state. Not Only Were clerkly criminals no longer to be 
"^^- sheltered, but all questions concerning church patronage 

or church contracts or injuries claimed by clergymen against laymen, 
were to be tried in the king's courts. Offenses not capital commit- 
ted by clergymen and suits relating to church lands held by spiritual 
service, were to be tried in the church courts. A layman could 
not be punished by the church courts. Tenants in chief or 
officers of the king could not be excommunicated without the 
king's consent. A clergyman could not appeal to Rome; nor 
were archbishops, bishops, or other persons to be allowed to leave 
the realm without the license of the king. No villain could be 
ordained without his lord's permission; no bishop could be chosen 
without the king's permission. 

To Thomas the constitutions were a cunning piece of tyranny. 

Whether in a moment of weakness he was induced by the bishops, 

who were now all with the king, to give his formal 

Tiyestrwiau asseut or not is doubtful. At all events he left the 

Willi Becket. 

council, determined to fight for his cause to the end; 
while Henry as naturally determined to use all his power to force 
the stubborn primate to resign. He summoned him to appear at 
a council at Northampton and then fined him for not coming. He 
made him give an account of the various moneys which he had 
handled as chancellor, although the justiciar, Richard de Lucy, 

1 Stubbs S. C. pp. 135-140. Also, Gee and Hardy, Documents, pp. 68-70. 



1166-1176] henry's reforms 219 

had formally released him from all claims when he resigned his 
office. Thomas, broken in fortune and forsaken by his fellow 
clergy, believed that his life was in danger and fled to Flanders. 
The king turned his anger upon the church of Canterbury and the 
dependents of Thomas, confiscating the revenues of the see and 
driving into exile the kinsmen and friends of the archbishop, to 
the number of four hundred. 

Henry, relieved by the voluntary exile of Becket, then went 

on with his reforms. As early as the Assize of Clarendon^ 1106, 

he had begun again to send the justices from the 

ThejiMices- d^rja Eegis to sit in the shire courts. Besides admin- 

'iiL-etjre. o 

istering justice, they were also expected "to look after 
the collection of the royal revenues, the enrollment of each person 
in a frank-pledge, and to see that all proper precautions were 
taken for keeping the king's peace." These justices were known 
as justices-in-eyre, from the Latin in itinere. In 1176 Henry 
formally divided England into the six permanent circuits which 
have remained with slight modification until recent times. 

The methods of procedure also received the touch of the same 
master hand. Civil causes, such as a dispute between two neigh- 
bors over the boundary of their farms, or the ownership 
Methods of ^ . „ t i -, -, -, „ i 

legal pro- 01 a piccc of wood, or the sale and purchase of cattle, 
had in ancient times been settled in fall shire-moot by 
hearing the statements on oath of persons who claimed to know 
the facts; the decision was given by the body of suitors present. 
The Normans had introduced the judicial duel, or combat, in which 
the disputants, or in case of women or monks or the aged, their 
representatives, set to in the presence of the court and fought the 
matter out. The Norman method however, was never popular 
with English townspeople, who were no such lovers of broken 
heads and bleeding faces as the jSTorman barons. Henry offered as 
an alternative to those who preferred, the privilege of bringing 
their disputes before a body of sworn men, who made inquiry under 
oath, discovered the facts, and recorded them. Just when this wise 
measure was introduced is unknown. In the Constitutions of 
Clarendon, the method is prescribed for the settlement of disputes 
about ecclesiastical property. 



220 FEUDAL EEACTIOK [henry II. 

The methods of criminal trial in vogue in the early twelfth cen- 
tury were even more crude than those used for the settlement of 

civil causes. According to the English method the 
^n-ocedure ^ccused man was allowed first to clear himself if he 
fimf^"'^^'^ could by the oaths of his neighbors, who simply vouched 

for his good character. If he failed in this, he was put 
to the ordeal.^ The trial by battle was also allowed here as in civil 
cases; the accused challenging the accuser. In either case the 
appeal was supposed to be made directly to God, who knowing the 
hearts of men would interfere to save the innocent or punish the 

guilty. Henry in the famous Assize of Clarendon rein- 

A.ssize of 

ciarendon, stituted in the place of the accusations of private indi- 
viduals the jury of inquest, corresponding to the modern 
grand jury, which had been discontinued in Stephen's time but 
had been used apparently more or less since the days of Ethelred-, 
when the twelve senior thanes of each hundred were accustomed to 
swear on the rood that "they would accuse no innocent man nor 
conceal any guilty man. " ^ Twelve legal men were now chosen from 
each hundred and four from each township, and when the justices 
came in circuit these sixteen presented to them upon oath any 
one in the hundred who was "notoriously a robber or murderer or 
receiver of such. " This jury was not a trial jury. It simply deter- 
mined whether the person accused ought to be tried or not. The 
trial then took place as before ; but the only ordeal allowed by the 
Assize was that of cold water, which meant almost certain condem- 
nation.^ The indictment of the jury, however, was a very serious 
matter of itself; for even if the accused succeeded in passing the 
ordeal, he was compelled to leave the country within forty days; a 
commendable way of ridding the community of undesirable char- 
acters. If he failed he was hanged, or otherwise jDunished as the 
judges might direct. 

In 1215 the practice of the ordeal was abolished throughout 
Christendom by the Fourth Lateran Council ; and as the jury of in- 



' See page 90. 
2StubbsSf. O. p. 72. 
^ See page 90. 



1170] THE IXQUEST OF SHERIFFS 221 

quest alone was inadequate to secure the ends of justice, the custom 
grew up in England of supplementing it by a second jury, known as 
the petit or little jury, whose function was to review 
tf/e'ord'cai'^ the work of the jury of inquest in a special case and 
hiVattir"'^ either affirm or deny its findings. It is interesting fur- 
ther to notice that the trial by battle remained, and that 
it was possible for the accused to select it in preference to a trial 
l)y petit jury as late as June 1819, when it was formally abolished 
by act of Parliament.^ 

In the management of the exchequer, Henry's purpose was to 
secure a large and steady revenue, yet levied equitably so as not 
to overburden any particular class. Accordingly he 
of Henry's' abolished the Danegeld which had ceased to be profit- 
able; but from the knights he took scutages, from 
the towns which were already growing up as centers of wealth he 
took tallages. The clergy who sometimes were inclined to claim 
immunity from taxation, he caused to bear their share by exacting 
from them special contributions under the 'gracious name of 
"gifts," — do7ia. From the estates of his own domain he received 
a steady stream of "ferms" paid by his custodians, and upon his 
officers also occasionally he levied the dona. The itinerant justices 
periodically visited the shires, holding pleas and gathering fees and 
fines, all of which went into the royal treasury. Another impor- 
tant income Henry derived from the Jews whom he undertook to 
protect against the intolerance and jealousy of the people in return 
for the payment of enormous sums of money. 

Yet although Henry honestly attempted to adjust taxation 

fairly, the burden rested grievously upon the necks of his people. 

For this he was not altogether to blame. The sheriffs 

TJlC XflQUCSt 

of Sheriffs, as a body had been trained in the evil school of Stephen 
and were not above plundering the people for their own 
profit. The poor and the friendless were the most frequent suffer- 
ers. They were often turned out of their homes and compelled in 
order to live to take to thieving and. plunder. The king's officers 
were making outlaws faster than the king's courts could hang 

' For the famous Tliornton case of 1817, see Taswell-Langniead, 5th ed. 
pp. 103-105. 



222 FEUDAL REACTION [henuy ii. 

them. Henry determined therefore to overhaul the whole system, 
and in the year 1170 sent out special commissioners to inquire 
whether the sheriffs were enforcing the laws ; whether they were 
taking bribes; how much money they were receiving from the 
counties and in a word to inquire into their entire official conduct. 
This was the famous Inquest of Sheriffs, conceived and carried out 
in a manner worthy of Charles the Great. It was no mere "white- 
washing commission." Twenty out of twenty-seven sheriffs were 
reported guilty of irregular practices and straightway deposed. 
The old sheriffs, moreover, had been selected from the great barons 
of the localities, some of whom held several counties and were in 
a fair way of assuming the importance of the former earls. The 
new appointees the king took from the exchequer; men of humble 
position who depended for their professional career solely upon the 
king's favor. 

For six years Becket had now been in exile. He had spent his 
time in a vain attempt to persuade Pope Alexander HI. to espouse 
his cause. But Alexander was sore pressed by the 
£^*'f/".l. .. „, Emperor Frederick Barbarossa and was not inclined to 
%id^Henni '^^I'eak with the English king. Instead, therefore, of tak- 
ing up the cudgels for Becket, he used his influence to 
bring Henry and his obdurate primate to an understanding, but 
only with partial success. Becket insisted on condemning the 
obnoxious Constitutions, and the king as stubbornly refused to give 
him the "kiss of peace." 

Matters were drifting in this uncertain way when Henry unfor- 
tunately contrived again to wound the pride of the archbishop. 
He had determined after the French custom to make 
onaaain^'^^ liis son, Henry, king during his own lifetime, and thus 
not only secure the peaceful succession of the crown, 
something as yet unknown in the annals of the Norman kings, 
but also provide for the better government of the kingdom during 
his own frequent and unavoidable absences in Normandy. No one 
questioned Henry's right to have his son crowned. But unfortu- 
nately the privilege of crowning English kings had been by long 
custom and common consent conceded to the archbishop of Can- 
terbury. Henry, however, was in no mood to honor Thomas and 



1170] THE MURDER OF BECKET 223 

allowed Roger, the new archbishop of York, an old enemy of 
Becket, to hallow the young Henry, Thomas was furious; he per- 
suaded the pope to suspend Roger, and also the bishops 
crdwnedaT^ of London and Salisbury who had taken part in the 
XweTi'^iw' ceremony. The king of France who was always ready 
to enlist against his rival of England and was never 
over-particular about the justice of his cause, was persuaded that an 
affront had been intended for him personally in that his daughter, 
tlie wife of Prince Henry, had not been crowned with her husband, 
and threatened war. The elder Henry quailed before the storm, 
and hastening to France attempted to conciliate Thomas, and finally 
persuaded him to return to England. When Thomas arrived, how- 
ever, Henry was still in France and the primate received but a cold 
welcome from those in authority. He first attempted to recover 
his confiscated estates, but with indifferent success; and when he 
complained, the young king laughed, refused to see him and bade 
him keep to his see. The reply of Thomas was to renew the sen- 
tence against Roger and the two bishops. The elder Henry at the 
time was at Bures, keeping the Christmas feast. The report of the 
new troubles of Becket were brought to him by the suspended 
bishops and put in such way, we may believe, as to reflect most dis- 
creditably upon the primate. The king heard, and in a moment of 
passion let slip the fatal words: "Here is a man that has eaten my 
bread; a pitiful fellow that came to my court on a sorry hackney 
and owes all he has to me, lifting his heel against me, and insult- 
ing my kingdom and my kindred; and not one of the cowardly 
sluggish servants I feed and pay so well has had the heart to avenge 
me!" Four knights heard the hot words of the king; returned to 
England, went to Canterbury, and there murdered the primate in 
St. Benedict's Chapel. 

Indignation and horror everywhere greeted this act of sacrilege. 

Henry cleared himself by oath of all complicity in the primate's 

death ; but his reforms trembled in the balance. The 

murder of Constitutions of Clarendon were nominally abandoned; 

Thomas. t i « rm 

but there was no one to take up the cause of ihomas 
and there the matter rested. The whole question of the supremacy 
of the civil power was left open; but to leave it open was to leave 



324 FEUDAL REACTION [henry 11. 

the advantage in the king's hands and ultimately give him the 
victory. During the lifetime of Henry, Thomas was canonized, 
and his shrine, erected at Canterbury, soon became a very popular 
resort for English pilgrims. 

It is now time to notice the relation of the king of England to 
the other parts of the British islands. From the time of William 

I. the princes of Wales had acknowledged a nominal 
^^f^^^^Qf*^ suzerainty, and Henry II. had carried on three wars with 
1166^1177 indifferent success to make these claims good. The 

kings of Scotland had also acknowledged a dependence of 
a vague kind. A suzerainty over Ireland had not as yet been more 
than thought of. The Irish had made some headway in the arts 
of civilization and had early accepted Christianity, though they had 
not yet become attached to the see of Eome. In 1154 Pope 
Adrian IV. as lord of all the islands of the sea, issued a bull bestow- 
ing Ireland on the English king and exhorting him to extend hither 
the papal authority. Henry at the time meditated a plan of con- 
quest, but gave it up in deference to the objection of his mother 
who thought he had quite enough to attend to at home. Ireland was 
still in the old tribal stage with various rival princes constantly 
warring with one another. In 1166 a prince named Dermod fled 
to Henry and did homage to him in order to secure his aid. 
Henry was not yet willing to undertake the quest himself, but gave 
permission to such of his knights as were ready, to attempt it. 
Dermod easily found allies in the adventurous nobles of the Welsh 
border, who under the leadership of Eichard de Clare, earl of 
Strigul, better known as "Strongbow," invaded Ireland and took 
possession of Leinster. Then lest such a colony if left in inde- 
pendence should prove a menace to the quiet of England, Henry 
asserted his authority as overlord. The outcome of the murder of 
Beclvet was at the time still in suspense and Henry was probably 
glad of any excuse for getting out of England. He compelled 
Strongbow's followers to submit to him, and besides received the 
homage of all the princes of Leinster and Meath. Directly the 
homage of the Irish princes was of little significance, for they 
ignored it again as soon as Henry's back was turned; but a foot- 
hold had been won in the island, a claim had been established 



1172-1174] EEVOLT OF THE BAEONS 225 

which was destined to draw the Irish ever more deeply under the 
shadow of their powerful neighbors. 

The family life of Henry reveals the same, sad blight which 

seems to have been the common lot of medieval kings. His warm 

nature craved affection and loyalty in those who were 

Revolt of the x4.i,-ii.Tm jji. , T_ 

harons, 1172- nearest to him, but Jlileanor, proud and treacherous by 

1174. . . 

nature, was incapable of bestowing either, and her sons 
were equally false and undutiful. In 1172 the king repeated the 
coronation of Prince Henry. He had already secured Brittany for 
his second son, Geoffrey, by marrying him to Constance, heiress of 
Brittany; and had made his third son Richard duke of Aquitaine. 
The danger in this scheme was that the sons who were never overdu- 
tif ul, would grow impatient of their father's control, and in hope of 
realizing their inheritances would lend a ready ear to the flat- 
teries of the king's many enemies. The younger Henry in par- 
ticular was a foolish and heady youth who was only too willing 
to believe that now he had been crowned, he ought to be really the 
king. He easily fell into the hands, therefore, of those who were 
jealous of Henry's greatness and who sought to use the youth as 
their tool. Eleanor and the younger sons also took side against the 
father. The barons of ^NTormandy were soon deeply involved in the 
rebellion, actively aided by the princes of Scotland, Flanders, and 
Champaign. But the difficulties which faced Henry only brought 
out all the splendid energy of his character. On the continent he 
was favored by the dissensions of his enemies. In England his 
justiciars, de Lucy and Glanville, served him loyally and were sup- 
ported generally by the sympathies of the people. In Norfolk they 
took the arch rebel, the earl of Leicester, while in the north the 
royal forces led by Glanville and supported by the men of Yorkshire 
gained a decisive victory over the Scots at Alnwick, taking their 
king, William the Lion. At the time, Henry was going through 
his seemly penance at the tomb of Becket, spending the night in 
prayers and tears, and offering his back to the sconrges of the 
monks. The news of Alnwick was received as the sign of divine 
forgiveness; the rebellion was broken, the rebels were at the king's 
feet. Henry, however, was in no mood to punish ; he would shed no 
blood and he made scarcely any confiscations. Yet in the interests 



226 FEUDAL REACTION [hknryII. 

of good government he insisted upon taking all the castles 
into his own hands and thus completed the work which he had 
begun twenty years before. Before releasing the king of Scot- 
land from his prison at Falaise, he obliged him to do 
F\iia^e%i74 ^lomage and acknowledge his supremacy over Scotland. 
The sons, however, were restored to their former posi- 
tions as prospective heirs to the various parts of Henry's dominions. 
Yet his trouble with them was by no means ended. The younger 
Henry went on with his intrigues until his death in 1183. The 
unpopularity of Geoffrey in Brittany made him also a source of 
constant trouble until his death in 1185. The death of Henry had 
left Richard the acknowledged heir to the throne, and the father 
proposed to transfer a part of Aquitaine to the portionless John. 
But Eichard was in no mind to renounce any of his lands in the 
south and made cause with Philip against the father. 

Thus Henry struggled on amid the deepening gloom of declin- 
ing years. Yet he had not for a moment forgotten the great work 
to which he had devoted his life. In 1176 he renewed 
Nm-thamp- the Assize of Clarendon at Northampton, and added 
other regulations for the better preservation of the 
peace. In 1178 he further organized the work of the Curia Regis 
by setting apart five judges and committing to them a great part 
of the judicial business, which it had been customary to bring 
before the Curia as a whole. This special committee developed 
ultimately into two separate courts, known as the Court of King's* 
Bench and the Court of Common Pleas, which with the Court of 
Exchequer already organized, constituted three coordinate branches 
of the Curia. 

The last great measure of Henry for the better ordering of the 

kingdom, was the famous Assize of Arms. The Norman kings 

had often found the fyrd useful both in repelling for- 

The Assize of q^qyi. invasion, as at Northallerton, and also in check- 

Arms, 1181, ° ' ' 

ing and overawing the barons. To encourage and 
strengthen the national forces, Henry proposed that every freeman 
should find arms and equipment according to his ability, estimated 
by the amount of his property. The Assize directed that every 
one holding a knight's fee should possess a coat of mail with hel- 



1187] THE CAPTURE OF JERUSALEM 227 

met, shield, and lance ; every man having chattels or receiving rent 
to the value of 16 marks should be armed in like manner; one who 
was worth 10 marks should have a coat of mail, an iron cap, and a 
lance; other freemen should provide themselves with doublet of 
mail, iron cap, and lance. The lance was evidently the important 
implement of war; the bow was not yet conspicuous. 

As the years of Henry's reign drew to its close, the eyes of all 
Christendom were once more turned to the east. The Christian 

kingdom of Jerusalem had been established in 1099, as 
of%"maTem ^^^ ^^ ^^^ results of the First Crusade, and had led a 
^'utJie Turks, precarious existence since, owing largely to the discords 

of the Christian knights rather than to the strength of 
their enemies. The surrounding Turkish states, small, and divided 
against each other, had been unable singly to drive out the 
strangers. But they had been united recently into a powerful 
state by the Sultan Noureddin and his son Saladin, who had suc- 
ceeded in combining all the vast military resources of the lands 
between the Nile and the Euphrates. Henry was particularly inter- 
ested, because through his grandfather Fulk of Anjou who had 
married for his second wife Milicent, the heiress of Jerusalem, an 
Angevin line had been established in the east. In 1186 the last male 
representative of the eastern Angevins had died, and Sibyl, the 
surviving daughter, had bestowed herself and her father's crown 
upon Guy of Lusignan. The valiant Guy had made a noble stand 
against the rising strength of Saladin, but at the battle of Tiberias, 
July 1187, the last remaining strength of the Christians was swept 
away, and Jerusalem with the "true cross" fell to the victor as 
the spoil of battle. 

The pope, Gregory VIII., had already sent out frantic appeals 
for help but the danger seemed remote, the western princes were 

all quarreling among themselves, and none had heeded. 
A new Cm- mi , , 

mdepro- iheu there came the news of the brave but hopeless 
stand at Tiberias, followed by the yet more astound- 
ing rumor of the fall of the holy city. Europe awoke as it had 
awakened a hundred years before under the fervid words of Peter 
the Hermit. The pope proclaimed the Crusade, and the princes 
of the west, swept along by the popular tide, dared not deny 



228 FEUDAL REACTION [henky II. 

the demand of their people to be led once more against the 
infidel. 

Henry, to whom the misfortunes of Guy were almost a personal 
matter, had long before begun to prepare for the Crusade, but in 
1185 he had been compelled by the earnest protest of his bishops 
and barons to abandon his project for the time. He now persuaded 
the great council to devote to the holy cause a tenth part of the 
goods of every man in England, the "Saladin tithe," ^ He found, 
however, that he was not yet free to move. He soon became in- 
volved in a fresh quarrel with his son llichard and the young king 
Philip II. of France, who suddenly invaded Henry's continental 
dominions at a time when he was not only ill but had been aban- 
doned by his mercenaries on account of arrears of pay. Henry 
could make no resistance. He was driven out of Le Mans, the city 
of his birth, and at last compelled to accept an humiliating treaty in 
which he conceded the demands of Eichard and Philip without 
reserve. Among these concessions, he agreed that Richard's asso- 
ciates should transfer their allegiance from the father to the son. 
'J'he king called for the list, and when he saw at the head the name 
of John, his youngest born, whom he had not suspected of treason 
and whom he dearly loved, he read no further. "I have nothing 
left to care for," cried the broken-hearted man, "let all things go 
their Avay." He did not recover from the shock, but died three 
days later, attended only by Geoffrey, an illegitimate son,^ and by 
William Marshal, who had been the friend and supporter of the 
younger Henry and had attached himself to the father after 1183. 
The sad death of Henry closed a uniformly successful life. As 
head of a compact kingdom and lord of nearly half of what is now 

France, his position among the princes of Europe was 
Henri'^^ second Only to that of the emperor. While Henry 

probably considered his continental interests of greater 
importance, the work which has given him his name lay in the 
island kingdom. His reign marks a great advance in the national 
life of England. The monarchy had triumphantly passed through 
the dangers of feudal anarchy. The king had proved himself to be 

iStubbs, S. C, p. 160. 

^ Not to be confused with the father of Arthur. 



THE WORK OF HEXRY 



229 



the one great centralizing and unifying influence in the state. 
The barons had been spoiled of their castles; the authority of the 
laws of the realm over all classes vindicated and the supremacy of 
the king's courts established upon a permanent foundation. 



CONTEMPORAEIES OF LATER NORMAN AND EARLY ANGEVIN KINGS. 



KINGS or FRANCE 

l'liilipl.,f7. 1108 
l,ouis VL, d. 1137 
l.ouis VII., a. 1180 
riiilipIL, 
Augustus, 1180 



EMPERORS 

Henry IV., d. 1106 
Henry V. (son-in- 
law of Henry of 
England), d. "ll25 
Lotliair II., c?.. 1137 
Conrad III., d. 11.^3 
Frederick I., 
Barbarossa, 1153 



1087-1187 

KINGS OF SCOTS 

Malcolm III., d. 1093 
Donald Bane, king in 
1093 and again in 1094 
Duncan, 1094 
Edgar, 1097-1106 
Alexander I., d. 1124 
David I., d. 1153 
Malcolm IV., d. 116.5 
William the Lion, 1165 



PROMINENT ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY 

■ Lanfranc, d. 1089 
Anselm, 1093-1109 
Theobald, 1139-1161 
Thomas, 1.162-1170 

PROMINENT CHIEF JUSTICIARS 

Ralph Flambard, 1094-1100 
Roger of Salisbury. 1107-1139 
Robert, Earl of Leicester, 1154-1167 
Richard de Lucy, 1154-1179 
Ranulf de Glanville, 1180 



MORE PROMINENT 
POPES 

Urban IL, d. 1099 
Paschal IL, d. 1118 
Oalixtus II., d. 1124 
Honoriusn.,(M130 
Innocent II., d. 1143 
f'elestineIL,(?. 1144 
Hadrian IV., 1154- 

1159 
Alexander III., d. 

1181 
Urban III, d. 1187 



CHAPTER VI 

THE GKOWTH OF POPULAR RIGHTS AND THE LOSS OF THE CONTI- 
NENTAL POSSESSIONS OF THE ANGEVINS 



RICHARD, 1189-1199 
JOHN, 1199-1204 



FAMILY OF HENRY II. 
Henry II. 



Henry, 
d. 1183 



Geoffrey William 

Archbishop I^ongsword 
of York Earl of 

(illegitimate) Salisbury 

(illegitimate) 



Richard 
King 
1189-1199 



Matilda=Henry of Saxony _ 

Otto IV. Emperor, 
1309-1218 



I 
Joanna 



William II. 
of Sicily 



I I I 

Geoffrey, Jolm Eleanor 

d. 1186 King m. 

m. 1199-1216 Alfonso 

Constance m. King of 

of Brittany Isabella Castile 

I of I 

Arthur Angouleme Blanche 
Duke of m. 

Brittany, Louis 

murdered VIII. of 

1203 France 



After Henry's death Richard passed quietly to the English 
throne. There were disgraceful riots ending in massacres of Jews 
in various parts of the kingdom; but they were inspired 
Richard^ ^J ^^^ desire of pious subjects to relieve their excess- 
^^^^' ive loyalty, rather than to show any feeling of hostility 

to the new king. In character Richard presented a marked con- 
trast to his father. Henry was a soldier only by necessity. He 
hated the riot and uncertainty of war. He loved order and pre- 
ferred to win his triumphs over the lawlessness of the time by the 
steady encroachment of good government and wise administration. 
Richard was a soldier rather than an administrator ; a knight errant 
rather than a statesman. His figure suggested great physical 
power and endurance. "His fresh complexion and golden hair" 
betrayed the viking blood. In dress he was showy and ostenta- 
tious; in the use of money, extravagant; in action, impulsive. 
Like Stephen he possessed the generous qualities of the soldier; 
but unlike Stephen, as his career in Poitou proved, he could 
enforce law and order. Yet he was full of visionary ambitions and 
possessed nothing of the Angevin aptitude for practical affairs. All 

230 



1189] SALE OF PKIVILEGES 231 

in all he was a poor king. Although born in England, he had 
spent his youth abroad and knew little of the people over whom he 
was to reign. He remained always an Aquitanian, and seemed 
to regard his kingdom only as an appanage of his continental 
dominions. He cared little for its interests, treating it for the 
most part as a convenient source of supplies in carrying on his 
continental schemes.^ 

Kichard had taken the cross in 1188, and his accession to the 
crown offered the means of putting his long-cherished plan of 
Richard's E^^^S ^^ ^ Crusadc into immediate execution. He 
^ttEi^f"^ found the treasury full, thanks to his father's thrift as 
motley. much as to the recently collected Saladin tithe. But 

these sums were not sufficient to enable him to carry out his plans 
upon the scale which he meditated; he set himself, therefore, to 
raise more money. He took fees from those whom he appointed 
to office and also from those whom he permitted to retire. The 
aged Justiciar, Eanulf de Glanville, eminent as the first scientific 
writer upon English law, was allowed to buy his way out of office that 
he might take part in the Crusade. Rights and immunities were 
thrown on the bargain counter in reckless profusion; "I would 
sell London," the king exclaimed, "if I could find a purchaser." 
In return for a payment of 10,000 marks, he released the king of 
Scots from the homage which he had sworn at Falaise. 

Treaty of 

Falaise ' To those who in a moment of thoughtless enthusiasm 
had taken the cross, he sold licenses to remain at home. 
The general traffic of the king in sheriffdoms, justiceships, church 
lands and appointments of all kinds, shocked even that age when 
public office had come to be regarded largely as a matter of private 
property; "all things were venal to him." "Thus the king 
acquired an infinite amount of money, more than any of his pred- 
ecessors is known to have had." 

In order to make provision for the government of the kingdom 
during his absence, Richard placed the authority of the justiciar 
jointly in the hands of Hugh of Puiset, the bishop of Durham, 
who paid £3,000 for the honor, and William of Longchamp, the 

' For character of Richard see Norgate, England under Angevin Kings, 
11,306-308. 



232 THE GROWTH OP POPULAR RIGHTS [richard i. 

chancellor. Longchamp was a foreigner, and said to be of mean 

birth. He had been raised over nobler heads to the chancellorship; 

then made bishop of Ely, and finally justiciar. He was 

provides for lame and ugly, but skillful and unscrupulous. He 

his absence. 

was hated by the nobles as a matter of course, and thus 
had every reason to be faithful to his master. 

In December 1189, Eichard left England for Palestine. But his 
back had hardly been turned before the two justiciars began to 

quarrel at the exchequer, and Longchamp, secretly sup- 
niicof'^^^'^^'^ ported by the king, displaced his rival. His increased 
iisa-^js'f™*'' power, however, brought him no popularity. He took 

no pains to disguise his contempt for the English whose 
language he would not speak; he gave offense to the nobles by 
placing his foreign friends and kinsmen in high positions, bestow- 
ing upon them the custody of castles and towns, which he seized 
under various pretexts. He lived himself in great luxury and 
pomp, traveling about the country with an extravagant retinue of 
fifteen hundred men. 

The growing unpopularity of Longchamp might not have 
been a serious matter, had it not been for Eichard's younger 

brother John, who saw an opportunity for mischief, 
a mischief- ' always grateful to his intriguing disposition. Eichard 

and John had been generally upon good terms, although 
Eichard was not unaware of John's treacherous nature. He 
had refused to recognize him as his heir, and in the arrange- 
ment which he had made for the government during his absence, 
had further denied John any share in the administration. He 
had also exacted a promise from John under oath, that he would 
leave the kingdom for three years; but to conciliate him, had 
given him control of five counties with their revenues and castles. 
Against the advice of Eleanor, however, the wise precaution of 
keeping John out of England had been abandoned, and he was now 
lording it like a king in his five shires, and openly encouraging 
the discontent of the deposed justiciar, Hugh of Durham, and the 
general restlessness of the barons under the insolence of Longchamp. 
An attempt of Longchamp to replace the castellan of Lincoln 
was resisted by John. For a moment it seemed that open war was 



1189-1191] EICHAED AND THE THIRD CRUSADE 233 

inevitable; but the quarrel was patched up, and Longchamp's 
tyrannies continued. John's half-brother, Geoffrey, had been 

recently made archbishop of York. Like John he had 
Lon %iam ^®®^ compelled to promise under oath that he would 

keep away from England during the king's absence; but 
like John also he had been released, and in August 1191 returned. 
Longchamp refused to believe in the alleged release and sent his 
men to arrest Geoffrey in Dover church. The people, who had not 
yet forgotten the brutal deed of Henry's knights at Canterbury, 
beheld the archbishop, dragged by hands and feet through their 
filthy streets, bareheaded, his sacred vestments torn and dis- 
heveled, "clinging to his pastoral cross and excommunicating his 
tormentors as he went." The unseemly sight destroyed what 
little respect still lingered for Longchamp's authority. John 
at once took up Geoffrey's cause, and summoning a great council 
at London, forced Longchamp to leave the kingdom. Eichard, it 
seems, had already heard of the difficulties of Longchamp and had 
sent back to England one of his father's old and long-tried officials, 
Walter of Coutances, archbishop of Eouen. Walter had reached 

England in April. At the moment everythinff was 

Walter of jo 

Coutances, quiet and according to instructions he kept his secret 
commission in his wallet. But the time had now come 
to act, and producing his commission he quietly took Long- 
champ's place at the council board. The arrangement had been 
made by Eichard's authority and John and his friends were 
forced to be satisfied. 

In the meanwhile Eichard was having his heart's content of 
intrigue and wild adventure. He and Philip of France had 

attempted to make the Crusade together, but had 
Richard and i i « * n r • 

the Third quarreled from the start. At Messina, where they 

passed the ^vinter of 1190 and 1191, so hot ran the 
fierce war of words that they all but came to blows. In June 
Eichard reached Acre where Guy of Lusignan, king of Jerusalem 
by right of his wife Sibyl, Eichard's kinswoman, had been carry- 
ing on a profitless siege since 1189. Frederick Barbarossa, the 
fine old septuagenarian emperor, had set out in 1190 to reach Syria 
by land, but had been drowned while crossing the Calycadmus, a 



234 THE GROWTH OF POPULAR RIGHTS [richard I. 

little stream of Asia Minor. Only a small part of his army ever 
reached the Holy Land, and although Philip had arrived at Acre 
in April, the outlook was still very gloomy when Eichard came. 
The camp was poorly arranged for the accommodation of large 
bodies of men, poorly drained and swept by pestilence. The ceme- 
tery near by already contained as many recruits as the armies that 
bivouacked before the city; the solemn muster including the names 
of Baldwin of Canterbury, and Ranulf de Grlanville, Henry's famous 
jurist. The arrival of Eichard, his skill and spirit, soon put new 
life into the besiegers, and within a month the city fell. The next 
step would have been naturally the capture of Jerusalem and the 
restoration of Guy. But the capture of Acre had cost 300,000 
men ; the leaders were divided and jealous of each other ; the recent 
death of Sibyl, also, in the eyes of the German and French leaders, 
had destroyed Guy's claim to the crown. Thus a new bone of 
contention was thrown into the camp and Philip and many of the 
Germans went home in disgust, leaving Richard to carry on the 
contest alone as best he could. Twice he led his troops almost 
within sight of the sacred battlements ; he beat the Sultan in a 
great battle at Asuf ; still with his depleted hosts he could not 
secure the prize. Then came news of more mischief-making at 
home where Philip who had now reached France, was secretly 
lending his influence to John's schemes. Richard determined, 
therefore, to make the best terms he could with Saladin and return. 
He obtained a truce which was to last three years, and which 
secured to Christians the privilege of visiting Jerusalem and trad- 
ing in the country. This done, Richard set out, leaving Hubert 
Walter, the crusading bishop of Salisbury, to bring home his ai'my. 
Richard's troubles were by no means over. He had intended 
to land at Marseilles, but rumor of a plot of Raymond of Toulouse 
to seize him upon landing, turned him back to the sea. 

Tlie return 

and capture, Finally, after long buffeting by contrary winds, he was 
wrecked near Ragusa and compelled to cross Germany 
on foot. Everything went well until he entered the dominions of 
Leopold of Austria, whom at the taking of Acre he had mortally 
offended by throwing down the duke's banner from the walls. 



1194] THE RANSOM OF RICHARD 235 

Eicliard had donned a pilgrim's garb and had allowed his beard to 
grow long. But he was recognized in spite of his disguise, and as 
he approached Vienna was seized and cast into prison, 

Philip no sooner heard of the good luck of Leopold, than he 
began to plot deeper mischief with John. Together they cun- 
ningly spread the rumor that Eichard was dead, and 

Intvigues of 

Philip and John was allowed to do homage for Richard's conti- 

John 

nental dominions. But neither Eleanor, nor Bishop 
Geoffrey, nor Hugh of Durham could be caught by such a trick, 
and when John demanded the custody of the English castles, they 
defied him. Philip then attempted to rouse the king of Denmark 
to invade England, while he with a French army invaded Nor- 
mandy, The nobles of Aquitaine were as usual ready to revolt, 
and even in Anjou Philip found a sentiment widely prevalent 
among the nobility, that their true interests lay in a closer alliance 
with the French king. 

In the meanwhile Richard fared but poorly in the hands of his 
captors. He was, however, too valuable a prisoner to keep in secret 

confinement, or to destroy. Under the strange ideas 
mcJiM^dto which prevailed, when states might play the footpad 
WGermami ^^^^^ cligi^i^y? Richard's capture was in fact a great 

speculation; he could be held for ransom. The busi- 
ness, however, was too great for Leopold alone to handle; so he 
sold out to the Emperor Henry VI. who had grudges of his own 
against Richard, and was not averse to satisfying his malice and 
filling his coffers at the same time. 

While Richard was thus spending his days in the seclusion of 
a German castle, John was conducting himself as though he 

expected his brother would never return, seizing castles 
The ransom, and defying the Justiciar, Yet lie did not forget to 

intrigue with Philip to prevent Henry from releasing 
his royal captive. All of this, of course, only raised the price of 
ransom, which was at last fixed at the enormous sum of 150,000 
marks. It was a serious burden to come in the train of so much 
else, and yet the nation assumed it loyally. Each knight's fee 
was bound by feudal law to pay its aid for the lord's ransom. Bnt 
the customary aid of 20 shillings per fee was inadequate to meet 



336 THE GROWTH OF POPULAR RIGHTS [richabi> 1. 

such a ransom as this. Accordingly the aids were supplemented 
by the exaction of a fourth part of the revenue or of the mova- 
ble goods of every man in the kingdom. To this the Cistercians 
and Gilbertines were also induced to add the fourth part of the 
wool of their flocks/ and many of the more important churches 
contributed their "plate and jewels." Similar exertions were also 
made in the continental dominions of Richard. Still the sum did 
not reach the ransom demanded by the enterprising emperor; yet 
enough had been raised to make a payment on account, and the 
emperor consented to release the king after receiving hostages in 
guarantee of the balance. Among the hostages was the justiciar, 
Walter of Coutances. As soon as Richard reached England, he 
summoned a great council of his barons at Nottingham, and to 
complete the ransom, levied two shillings upon every ploughland 
of one hundred acres, the carucage. It was also proposed 
to confiscate all the wool of the Cistercians for one year, 
but they were finally allowed to compensate by a money payment 
instead. 

As a salve to the pride of Richard, before he left Germany the 
emperor had bestowed upon him the titular crown of the kingdom 
The titular ^^ Burguudy; to Richard an acquisition of some impor- 
Burmmdv tance, since by it he became a prince of the empire. 
'ard^Homaae ^^lother transaction is also connected with the ransom 
for England. Qf Richard which has caused English historians some 
difficulty to explain. It is said that Richard formally renounced 
his English kingdom to the emperor, handing him his cap in lieu 
of the crown in token of surrender, and that the eniperor returned 
it to him again, on condition of homage and a yearly rent of 
£5,000. The arrangement was afterward annulled by the 
emperor.^ So at last Richard was free and the fabulous ransom was 
paid. Henry, apparently, still had an unworthy feeling that he might 
have made a better bargain. But the pope and the German princes 
were indignant at the ill usage of Richard and at the violation of 
his rights as a crusader, and Henry did not dare longer to offend 
the awakening sentiment of Europe. 

- 1 Compare Norgate II, p. 326 with Stubbs, C. H., I, p. 540. 
^Stubbs, C. H., I, p. 601. 



1194] HUBERT WALTER 237 

Kichard remained in England from March 20 until May 12, 

barely two months, but long enough to finish tumbling down 

John's house of cards, and then was off again to the 

Richard's ,,i i . ..i -r»> -t ttt- i i 

second stay continent to settle his score with rhilip. With charac- 
teristic generosity he pardoned John. "I forgive him," 
said the king, "and hope that I shall as easily forget his injuries 
as he will my pardon." He was too shrewd, however, to put lands 
or power again into John's hands. John on his part realized that 
it was useless to intrigue further against his powerful brother, 
and accepting a stipend which enabled him to live in a way 
becoming his rank, he gave no more trouble for the rest of Eichard's 
reign. After bringing John to terms, Richard then set himself 
to raise new funds in order to further his schemes against Philip. 
He compelled those who had made trouble during his absence to 
forfeit vast sums; sheriffs were turned out of their positions upon 
various pretexts, and another sale of offices began ; charters and 
privileges were again scattered freely for money, and many towns, 
imitating the recent example of London,^ seized the opportunity 
to gain corporate rights. 

While in his German prison Eichard had secured the election 
of the crusader Hubert Walter to the see of Canterbury. 
Hubert was no ordinary priest. He was a nephew of 
Walter. Henry's great justiciar, Eanulf de Glanville, and had 

been trained in his household. He had accompanied his 
venerable primate. Archbishop Baldwin, in the Crusade, and after 
his death had been tacitly recognized as the chief among the 
spiritual leaders of the English crusaders, and when Eichard has- 
tened home, it was to Hubert that he entrusted the conduct of 
the returning host. As archbishop, Hubert had at once exercised 
a decisive influence in checking the elements of disorder which 
were seeking to take advantage of the prolonged absence of the 
king; he had inspired the measures for raising the king's ransom, 
and by supporting the Justiciar Walter and casting the weight of 
the church against John, had materially contributed to the over- 
throw of John's influence even before the release of Eichard. 

1 For date (1191) of granting the commune to London and for influence 
of example, see Round, The Commune of London, pp. 219-260. 



338 THE GROWTH OF POPULA.E RIGHTS [richabdI. 

When, therefore, the Justiciar was summoned to Germany to present 
himself as a hostage in order to secure the king's release, Arch- 
bishop Hubert had been appointed to succeed him. 

The task which was assigned the new justiciar was not an 

enviable one. In order to support Eichard in the war which he 

proposed to wage against his continental foes, Hubert 

Hiihert was expected to raise funds from the already exhausted 

Walter and 

the iiomicai kingdom and yet keep the people contented and sub- 

tiicpoopjc' missive. The justiciar, however, fully grasped the con- 
ditions of his position; he knew the temper of the 
English and saw that his only hope of success lay in win- 
ning their confidence and active support. To this end he sought 
to avoid the appearance of irregular or arbitrary extortion 
by throwing the assessment of levies largely into the hands 
of the people; he also gave them a more direct share in the 
administration of justice, taking from the sheriffs the selec- 
tion of the juries of presentment and placing it in the hands 
of the "lawful men" of the shires. He also greatly enlarged 
the scope of these juries, not only inviting them to adjudge pleas 
of the crown, but calling upon them for support and cooperation 
in almost every emergency. Constitutionally these innovations 
were of the utmost importance ; they not only did much to restore 
the habit of local self-government, which was rapidly passing into 
a mere tradition under the deadening influence of the Norman- 
Angevin system of centralization, but they also inaugurated a 
course of political education which directly prepared that genera- 
tion of Englishmen for the role which they were to play in the 
great era at hand. 

Notwithstanding these wise and statesmanlike measures, how- 
ever, Hubert was not able altogether to forestall discontent. In 
London the poor craftsmen, the weavers, the arrow- 
Discontentof gmitlis, the day laborers, and others, who were not land- 
holders and so had no voice in making assessments or 
directing the local administration, charged the burghers with 
sparing their own purses at the expense of the poor. Murmurs 
soon passed to open riot and bloodshed. An eccentric burgher, 
William Fitz-Osbert, called also "William Longbeard," a returned 



1194-1198] WILLIAM LONGBEAED 239 

crusader, championed the cause of the people. He was a natural 
agitator, and by proclaiming the monstrous doctrine that "every 
man, poor or rich, ought to pay his share of the city's bur- 
den according to his means," a doctrine which he advocated with 
rare eloquence, soon made himself the special object of govern- 
ment wrath. The justiciar attempted to arrest William, but he 
resisted, slew one of his assailants and fled to the church of Saint 
Mary-at-Bow. Hubert who might not take William in the church 
without violating sanctuary, ordered the building to be fired. 
The leaping flames drove William upon the soldiers waiting with- 
out; he was at once struck down, and, stripped and bleeding, was 
dragged through the city to the gallows at Elms ^ and there hanged 
with eight of his comrades. The cause of popular liberty was to 
have many such martyrs in the near future, but none more noble 
and sincere, none of clearer vision than the eccentric William 
Longbeard. 

This exhibition of harshness did not increase the strength 
of Hubert; popular disapproval continued to find expression, 

and finally became so pronounced that the justiciar 
oFiimjh^ asked to be relieved. Richard, however, needed him, 
Ldlicoin'^ and at his special request Hubert once more took up the 

ungrateful burden. In the meantime discontent was 
spreading among all classes, and steadily solidified into a stubborn 
determination to pay no more taxes; and when in 1198 Richard 
sent over a demand not only for more money but for men as well, 
even the saintly Hugh of Avalon, bishop of Lincoln, who was rever- 
enced in England as no other man since the death of Anselm, pro- 
tested against the unheard-of exaction. At a great council held at 
Oxford he faced the justiciar with the noble words: "Ye know 
well, my lords, that I am a stranger in this land, one called from 
the plain life of a hermit to be bishop. But when our Lady's 
Church of Lincoln was given into my unskilled hands, I set about 
learning what its rights and burdens were, and these thirteen years 
I have walked in all the ways of my forerunners. I know very 
well that this church is bound to furnish knights for the king's 
service in England, but not for service abroad. And I will go back 

1 The later Tyburn. 



240 THE GKOWTH OF POPULAR RIGHTS [kichabdI. 

at once to my old hermit's life rather than lay fresh burdens on 
this bishopric committed to my charge." Herbert, the bishop of 
Salisbury, a member of the family of the great Roger, also sup- 
ported Hugh, and Hubert, quailing before opposition such as this, 

durst not press the demand for men, although the barons 
carucage, finally submitted to the levy of a carucage, at the rate 

of five shillings on each carticate. No one, however, 
paid the tax vi^illingly; the monks refused outright, and were 
brought to terms only by threat of outlawry. Poor Hubert was 
now pressed from all sides. The taxpayers held him responsible 
for the exactions, and the absent king held him responsible for the 
tardy payment ; while the pope on his own account sent him some 
very plain-spoken advice. "It was not worthy," he wrote, " that 
an archbishop should be a judge and a taskmaster." Feeling 
that'he was discredited on all sides, and undoubtedly weary of the 
whole business, Hubert resigned, and Geoffrey Fitz-Peter, another 
of Henry 11. 's men, was appointed in his place. The new justiciar 
was quite as able as Hubert, but more stern and troubled by fewer 
scruples. The administration, however, was suddenly confronted 
with a new series of problems by the death of Eichard. 

Since his return to the continent Richard had been engaged in 
almost constant strife with the French king, Philip, as we have 

seen, had got the pot well boiling when the unwelcome 
the continent, news of Richard's release reached him. The famous 

1194-1199* 

message which he sent to John, "The devil is loose, 
take care of yourself," attests his respect for the wild energy of 
Richard's character, and that he fully expected trouble. It 
was this war both of defense and revenge, that Richard had 
taken up with all the cunning and unscrupulous violence of the 
Angevin, and for which Hubert Walter had been exacting such 
vast sums from the long-suffering loyalty of the English. The 
rebels of Aqaitaine were reduced; Philip was checked on the 
Norman border ; and Flanders, the ally of Philip, was bought off 
by a well-timed bribe. The counts of Chartres, Champagne, 
Boulogne, and others, including the most powerful vassals of Philip, 
were leagued in revolt; while by Richard's influence in the Ger- 
man diet he managed to secure the election of his nephew, Otto of 



1199] DEATH OF RICHARD 241 

Saxony, as Henry VI. 's successor, and thus laid the foundation of 
an alliance of England and the empire. In order to hold his Norman 
frontier against Philip, Richard seized the church lands where "the 
Seine bends suddenly at Gaillon in a great semicircle to the north, 
and where the valley of Les Andelys breaks the line of cliffs along 
its banks," and here on a spur of the chalk hills, connected with the 
plateau in the rear by a narrow neck, at the dizzy height of three 
hundred feet above the river, he reared his "Saucy Castle," the 
Chateau Gaillard. Philip saw the massive fortress rising and 
swore that he would take it, "were its walls of iron." Richard 
as defiantly replied: "I would hold it, were its walls of butter." 
The archbishop of Rouen, Richard's old justiciar, Walter of Cou- 
tances, laid Normandy under an interdict; but Richard only 
mocked. "Had an angel from heaven bid him abandon his work, 
he would have answered with a curse." ^ 

The completion of this great frontier fortress was to be the 
preliminary to a final and crushing blow, which Richard had 
prepared for Philip. Richard's allies were all ready 
deaih^im ^^^ ^^^^^ money was needed. But to get this Richard 
was at his wit's end, for England had at last 
failed him. Then came a mysterious report of a remark- 
able treasure-trove, uncovered at Chaluz, exaggerated by rnmor 
into "twelve knights of gold seated round a golden table." 
It was perhaps no more than a chess table with pieces of gold ; but 
it was enough to rouse the hungry king who straightway as over- 
lord, asserted his rights to the treasure-trove and claimed the 
"find" whatever it might be. The Lord of Chaluz refused to 
give up the treasure, and Richard came with his men-at-arms to 
enforce his claim. The castle was not large and was defended only 
by fifteen men, seven knights and eight serving men; yet they 
held out for a day, and one of the crossbowmen who in spite of the 
enemies' bolts had kept his place on the walls in hope of getting a 
shot at Richard, succeeded at last in lodging an arrow in his neck. 
The wound of itself was not serious, but the bad surgery of Rich- 
ard's physicians as well as the king's impatience caused the wound 

1 See Green, H. E. P., I, pp. 187 and 188. 



242 THE GROWTH OF POPULAR RIGHTS [richardI. 

to mortify, and in a few days Richard was dead, with almost his 
last breath forgiving the poor fellow who had slain him. 

Directly, Richard had had little to do with England. His per- 
sonal career belongs to the continent. Only seven months all told of 

the ten years of his reign, were spent in his island 
of Richard's kingdom, and yet no ten years of English history are 

more important than these years of Richard's absentee 
reign. It was an era when the results of Norman and Angevin 
rule gathered solidity and permanence; when the nation was 
beginning to realize the full benefit of the policy of the two great 
Henrys in crushing the baronage and reducing all elements to the 
sway of the laws, and when older popular elements, by taking 
advantage of the needs of the crown, were gathering new strength 
in organization. 

This latter movement was particularly noticeable in the 
progress of the towns. The early English towns had grown up 

around castles or monasteries. For the most part they 
andthe'^ads ^^^'^ merely overgrown villages where the country folk 

came to find a market, and where in rude and ill-kept 
huts the small merchant or the poor artisan sheltered himself and 
his family. Since the Conquest, as a result of the increased foreign 
trade, the seaport towns had risen to considerable importance, 
and in turn had contributed not a little to the growing wealth of 
the more humble towns of the interior. The kings of foreign blood 
knew the value of local organization in these centers of denser pop- 
ulation, its necessity as an adjunct of administration, and did not 
hesitate to encourage the people to assume some responsibility in 
matters of local government. In this they were assisted by the 
presence of gilds which had been a potent influence in English 
town life from the earliest times. These gilds originally 
were private associations of one kind or another organized 
by citizens for mutual help. Of these the merchant gilds 
very early assumed an importance and influence beyond any of the 
others. Often they were strong enough to control all the affairs 
of the town, assuming practically the functions of a town council. 
The gild hall became virtually the city hall, and the members of the 
gild were distinguished from the herd of unprivileged classes as the 



THE COMMUNA 243 

governing or citizen body. They Jealously guarded their interests 
against outsiders and, save in the article of food, would tolerate 
no rivalry in trade within the city market from any who were- not 
gild brethren. 

For the most part the towns were situated on the demesnes of 

the crown, and as they increased in wealth and strength, their first 

thought naturally was to free themselves from the con- 

Privilcges i « i i -ni. i 

(if towns. trol of the sherin and secure the right of administering 
Communa. . 

the functions of his office themselves. The king, more- 
over, soon discovered that the people were better tax collectors than 
the sheriff, and found that it was for his interest to allow the 
towns to pay a fixed maximum sum and collect it themselves in their 
own way. This privilege was known as the grant of firma hurglii. 
The citizens, however, were not quit of the authority of the sheriff 
as long as they were under the jurisdiction of the sheriff's court. 
Beside the firma burghi, therefore, the towns sought also to secure 
the privilege of having courts of their own, under the charge of their 
own magistrates. But these privileges carried with them serious 
duties, and in order to fulfill them properly some corporate organiza- 
tion was necessary. When so organized, with its liberties defined 
and confirmed in legal form by a charter, the town became a corpor- 
ation, or communa. The Henrys granted many such charters with 
the sincere desire no doubt of encouraging wealth and trade 
and building up cities. Richard granted a large number as we 
liave seen, not because he cared for the towns, but because he 
needed money. Yet the results were the same; the charter was 
just as good and the privileges as valuable and just as highly 
prized, whether they came from the political foresight of the king 
or from his avarice. 

Of the cities benefited by this generous policy of the Norman 
and Angevin kings, London was the most important as well as the 

most conspicuous. It then of course bore no compai'i- 
Lonoon'^^ SOU to the present city; but its political influence at 

critical periods of the nation's history was even more 
marked and important. It was the first city of the realm in size 
and wealth. It was naturally the greatest center of trade; from 
all the kingdom the roads converged ujaon its gates, and from the 



344 THE GEOWTH OF POPULAR RIGHTS [richardI. 

broad mouth of the Thames its shipping went forth each year to 
seek trade in unaccustomed seas. The buildings were thickly 
set; fires, a constant menace to the medieval city, were frequent 
and disastrous; the streets were narrow, poorly paved, always 
dirty, and lighted only by the flickering lamp which piety kept 
alive before the street corner Madonna. Pigs might be kept in the 
houses, though they were not allowed to wander in the streets. 
But these things were not regarded as they are now and other 
cities were in as bad condition or worse. All in all, London was no 
doubt a very grand affair to the rural Englishman who stumbled 
through the foul smells of its tortuous streets for the first time. 
The importance of the city very soon brought to her people unusual 
privileges, and London became a sort of "standard of the amount 
of self-government at which the other towns of the country might 
be expected to aim." William I. gave the city its first charter; 

a brief one, the provisions of which require only eight 
charter^'^ lines of modern book print to state; and yet it meant 

much, for in these eight lines the Conqueror gave his 
word to the citizens that their property should not be taken from 
them, and that their privileges should be continued. In Henry 
L's charter the Londoners were put into possession of more 
extensive rights ; they were granted the ferm of Middlesex "with 
the right of appointing the sheriff: they were freed from the 
immediate Jurisdiction of any tribunal except of their own 
appointment, from several universal imposts, from the obligation 
to accept trial by battle, from liability to misencoi'dia or entire 
forfeiture, as well as from tolls and local exactions."^ Tbey were 
also secured their separate franchises and their weekly courts. 
Yet Henry's charter did not create the communa, but left the 
city still an "accumulation of distinct and different corporate 
bodies." Nor was it until Richard's reign ^ that London assumed 
the character of a compact and perpetual organization under its 
lord mayor and twelve aldermen, each representing one of the 
twelve wards of the city. 

iStubbs, S. C.,pp. 107, 108. 

^ For the ' 'coinniunio" of Stephen see Round, The Commune of Lon- 
don, pp. 223, 224. 



1199] THE SUCCESSION OF JOHN 245 

The death of Richard left the vast Angevin dominions once 
more at the mercy of Philip. Richard was childless and had 
named John as his heir ; and in England where Arthur, the son of 
Geoffrey, had no standing, John succeeded to the throne without 
difficulty. On the continent, however, Arthur was high in Phil- 
ip's favor; for the same policy which had made the 
Thesucces- king of France the friend of Prince Henry and Richard 
when they were at war with their father, but John's 
friend and Richard's enemy as soon as Richard became king, now 
made this same king John's most dangerous foe. In order to 
cripple John, therefore, Philip took up Arthur's cause 
PhiUn'''^^"'^ and helped him, supported by his Bretons, to make 
good his claims in Anjou, Maine, and Touraine. 
Normandy was safe, for John had been invested by Arch- 
bishop Walter of Rouen with the insignia of the ducal office 
before departing for England to receive the English crown, 
Aquitaine was also saved by the ready wit of Eleanor, who com- 
pelled Philip to bestow it upon her as duchess in her own 
right. Philip, moreover, was by no means sure of his ground. 
An attempt to put away his wife, had embroiled him with the 
pope and he feared the interdict, which might prove a very 
serious matter should it come while he was at war with John. 
Otto of Germany and the count of Flanders also were preparing 
to carry out their recent agreement with Richard and invade 
France from the northeast. Philip, therefore, thought it safer to 
bow to the storm and disarm his foes by making peace with John. 
Accordingly he changed his policy; threw- over Arthur entirely, 
and received John's homage for Anjou and the other lands in 
question. As a further pledge of the French king's friendship, 
his son Louis married John's niece Blanche, the davighter of his 
sister Eleanor and Alfonso of Castile. 

John was now everywhere triumphant, and a better man might 

have had a long and successful reign, but he was his own worst 

enemy. He possessed some of the abilities, and all of 

opjohn^^ the darker moral traits of his family. He liad been a 

bad son and a treacherous brother. He was as vicious 

as William Rufus and as mean as Ethelred. He had, moreover, 



246 THE GROWTH OF POPULAR RIGHTS [johU 

Eichard's insatiate greed for money but with nothing of that 
romantic vision of great things which had gone far to justify his 
extortions in the eyes of the nation. 

John at first took up his brother's policy and made little 
change in the administration at home. Perhaps he had already 

learned the temper of the English people in his earlier 
of^john"^'^^^ experiences, and knew that his only hope of success 

against the wily Philip lay in keeping a united England 
at his back. Geoffrey Fitz-Peter was continued as Justiciar and 
made earl of Essex. Archbishop Hubert was added to the council 
as chancellor. William Marshal, who had been John's friend in the 
quarrel with Longchamp, and who had married Eva, the heiress 
of "Strongbow," was allowed to succeed to the Clare estates and 
titles as Earl of Strigul and Pembroke. 

John, however, was the creature of his passions, and soon 
plunged from one infatuation into another in utter disregard of 

the enemies he might make. In 1189 he had married 
nobiefof'^^ Avicc, the granddaughter of Eobert of Gloucester and 
PoiUm'^"'^'^ a co-heiress of the vast estates of that family. She 

was John's third cousin, and hence came within the 
lines of consanguiuity forbidden by the church. Still the pope 
had given his dispensation and all had gone well, until John made 
up his mind to marry Isabella of Angoul6me and persuaded some 
Aquitatiian bishops to annul his first marriage. The Gloucester 
family was very powerful, and when John in addition to the insult, 
refused to surrender the lands of Avice, the breach was irrepara- 
ble. Isabella of Angouleme, moreover, was the affianced bride of 
Hugh the Brown, son of Count Hugh of La Marche, and con- 
nected with Guy of Lusignan and other powerful nobles of Poitou, 
and when John claimed the younger Hugh's bride, the Lusignans 
in their turn were furious. But as if his offence were not serious 
enough, John ordered the barons of Poitou to appear before his 

court on charge of treason against the late king and 
Arigevin himself, and clear themselves by ordeal of battle. They 

at once appealed to Philip as overlord; and he hav- 
ing made his peace with the pope by taking back his wife, 
was delighted to have an opportunity to reopen the case against 



1304] LOSS OF THE ANGEVIN" DOMINIONS 247 

John, and ordered him to surrender his French fiefs to Arthur. 
John refused and Philip summoned him for trial before his 
court in Paris. When the appointed day came and John failed 
to appear, Philip in accordance with feudal law declared him to 
be a contumacious vassal and to have forfeited by default all fiefs 
which he held of the French crown. 

Philip proceeded at once to carry out the decree of his court, 

invaded Normandy, and began reducing its castles. Arthur in the 

meanwhile had been foolish enough to be drawn into the 

of Arthur quarrel again, and with his Bretons had laid siege to 

Angevin the castle of Mirabeau with the hope of seizing Eleanor, 

dominioTis . 

his grandmother. John who m emergency was capa- 
ble of acts of heroic exertion, by a forced march surprised 
Arthur, carried him off and ultimately lodged him at Rouen, the 
last that was seen of this unfortunate prince. John was equal 
to any wickedness and it is not unlikely that he compassed his 
nephew's death, if he did not actually stab him with his own hand 
and throw the body into the Seine, as reported by a very venerable 
tradition. The murder of Arthur completed the trilogy of fatal 
blunders. Philip at once proclaimed John the murderer, cited 
him a second time to appear before his court and to the sentence 
of forfeiture added the sentence of death. ^ The Norman castles 
fell one after the other, and finally, after a year's siege, even 
Chateau Gaillard passed into Philip's hands, March 1204. It 
was the beginning of the end. The Seine was now open to 
Philip's armies. John's vassals of Normandy refused longer to sup- 
port him. In April, 1204, Eleanor died, and with her, John lost 
the last tie which bound him to his continental barons. Before 
the summer closed, Anjou, Touraine, and Maine had also passed 
permanently into Philip's hands; the next year Poitou was 
overrun and of all the splendid possessions of the Angevin kings 
on the continent only scattered fragments remained, Gascony, 
Guienne, and one or two strongholds in Poitou. 

At the time Englishmen regarded the triumph of Philip with 
a sense of deep humiliation. Yet nothing more fortunate could 
have happened to the English state. Richard's absentee reign had 

J Norgate, II, p. 408. 



248 THE GROWTH OF POPULAR RIGHTS [john 

tested and proved the splendid administrative machinery of Henry 

II. ; and men were coming to distinguish between the government 

and the personality of the king. Eichard, moreover, 
Thesepara- , , , ■,-,-,■, ^ • % « •,, i 

wm of had been compelled by his need of money to allow the 

England . "^ '' 

from the people a voice m the assessment of taxes. The shire- 

continent. , , , , 

moots also had beea given control of pleas of the crown. 
Taxation and representation became thus linked indissolubly in the 
national mind, and the people began to take their first steps in 
actual self-government. When, therefore, John was bowed out of 
the continent by the wily Philip, he found himself face to face 
with a nation that had passed its nonage and would no longer tol- 
erate abases which had sprung of an irresponsible kingship. The 
old baronial families who like the king were also severed from con- 
tinental interests, forgot their foreign parentage and once and for 
all time accepted the position of English subjects of an English 
king. The nation felt the accession of strength and came very 
soon to recognize the baronage as a part of itself; and although 
the influence of the French language and French social customs 
lingered long after the era of John, the power of French political 
ideas over England was broken, and the nation was left free to 
develop its own peculiar institutions and in its own way. Thus 
the separation of England from the continent, though forced upon 
the nation against the will of its king and against the will of the 
people, formed no unimportant link in the series of great events 
which were preparing England for her future. It restored to her 
once more the natural advantage of her position behind the 
Channel; it threw her back upon her own resources, and com- 
pelled her to develop that intensive life, so marked in every people 
who have been called upon to play a great role in human history.' 

1 For review of the early Angevin era and results see Norgate, II, 
chap. X, The New England. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE GREAT CHARTER 

JOHN, 1204-1216 

The territorial combination created by the Norman Conquest 

was now definitely broken and English feudalism had been cut off 

from the source from which it had originally drawn its 

The new ijfe. Tbis event, coming so soon after the overthrow of 

issue. ' ° 

the barons and the restoration of the national courts, 
was of the utmost importance, not only in forestalling any recru- 
descence of political feudalism, but also in permanently establish- 
ing as a part of the English constitution the principle for which 
the Norman Henry and the Angevin Henry had so nobly strug- 
gled, — that in England all classes are subject to the laws of the 
realm. But the quarrel of king and feudal baron had hardly been 
settled, when a new and more serious menace to the happiness of the 
people appeared in a quarter from which they had been accustomed 
heretofore to expect comfort and protection, and presented to the 
nation a new problem for solution. Should the crown become an 
irresponsible and lawless power; or should the king and his 
ministers also be held amenable to the laws to which they had 
forced the barons to submit; and if so, by what legal machinery 
could the nation compel the crown to respect its own laws, with- 
out resorting to the violent methods of revolution? Here in a 
word was the new problem which confronted England. 

It was perhaps fortunate that John was utterly contemptible. A 
nature so base, so treacherous, could inspire no sentiment of loyalty 

to obscure in the minds of good men the real issue. His 
aportjf*'''^"* tyrannies were so flagrant, so brutal ; his violation of law, 

his trespasses upon the rights of all classes of his subjects, 
so arbitrary and so unreasonable, that it was impossible to create a 
personal party in his favor or draw about him any portion of his 

249 



250 THE GREAT CHARTER [john 

people. The king stood alone, without any of that glamour 
which surrounded the second Stuart and which made him in his 
death appear to many a veritable martyr. One bad man stood 
alone, confronted by the nation, powerful in its integrity, ter- 
rible in its calm self-possession, and determined that the king 
should rule in accordance with the laws of the land, or not rule at 
all. 

John's troubles at home began soon after the last triumph of 

Philip. On July 12, 1205, the veteran Hubert Walter died. Of 

late John and his chancellor had not been upon the 

The 

contest£d best of terms; Hubert had not hesitated to pro,test 
Canterbury, against the tyrannies of John, and John had so far 
fretted under the restraints put upon him by the hon- 
est old minister, that the news of his death was received with an 
exultant sense of relief which he did not try to disguise. But 
Hubert was also archbishop of Canterbury. Next to the crown 
there was no more important office in the kingdom. What its 
influence might be in shaping the destiny of the realm or in brav- 
ing wayward kings had been shown in the careers of Dunstan, 
Lanfranc, Anselm, Theobald, and Becket. John, therefore, fully 
realized the importance of fdling the vacancy with one of his own 
creatures, if he would control the policy of the church. But 
unfortunately for John's plans the right of electing to this impor- 
tant post had long been a subject of dispute between the suffragan 
bishops of the metropolitan province and the monks of Christ 
Church Priory, who since the days of Augustine had acknowl- 
edged the archbishop as their abbot. The king also had a right 
in equity to a voice in an appointment so closely related to the 
welfare of his realm, and since the Conquest had generally named 
the candidate to be elected. When, therefore, John learned that 
on the very night following Hubert's death, the junior monks of 
Christ Church had secretly met, and had not only elected the sub- 
prior, Reginald, to the primacy but liad forthwith without waiting 
for the approval of the king, dispatched the archbishop-elect 
to Pome to secure confirmation at the hands of the pope, John 
was furious. The senior monks and the bishops were also deeply 
vexed. Reginald was a babbling, shallow sort of fellow, hardly 



1207, 1208] STEPHEN LANGTON 25l 

to be taken seriously; yet his election, if once confirmed by the 
pope, apart from the question of right involved, might prove grave 
enough. All parties, therefore, appealed to Rome. John, however, 
first announced as his candidate John de Gray, bishop of Nor- 
wich, liad him elected and put in charge of the see, and then sent 
him oif to plead his cause at the Roman court, trusting to win his 
case by the free use of money among the officials who were sup- 
posed to be in the confidence of the pope. 

The low cunning of John was no match for the statesmanlike 

pope. Innocent III., who had recently brought the wily Philip 

Augustus to terms, and who knew John better than 

The election 

iif Langton, John knew himself. After letting the case drag on for 
a full year and a half, Innocent declared that the right 
of election lay with the monks; rejected both candidates upon the 
ground that neither election had been canonical, and persuaded 
the proctors of the monks of Christ Church who were present, to 
elect an Englishman named Stephen Langton. The nomination 
by the pope was clearly a violation of the right both of the Eng- 
lish church and of the English crown; yet never was usurpation 
more fully justified by the results. A better choice could not have 
been made. Langton was a man singularly pure and noble in pur- 
pose, of great personal dignity, wide learning, and had been recently 
raised to the high dignity of cardinal. John refused to assent to the 
papal choice; and when the pope proceeded to consecrate his candi- 
date notwithstanding, John swore that he would never allow 
Langton to land in England. 

John was now face to face with a man who was accustomed to 
having his way. A wise king might have rallied his people about 
The inter- ^^"^ ^^^ fought out the issue upon the broad principles of 
diet, 1208. i\^Q independence of the English crown. But John was 
not wise. He became violent, and descended to petty persecutions 
of the monks of Christ Church. He threatened to drive all clergy- 
men from the realm. He swore he would seize and mutilate every 
Italian he found in his kingdom. The reply of Innocent to John's 
furious outbreak was the interdict. This was an ecclesiastical weapon 
which had been used by earlier popes with great effect. It forbade 
all religious services, except baptism and extreme unction. Mar- 



252 THE GREAT CHARTER [john 

riage ceremonies could not be performed ; mass was celebrated for 
the clergy alone; and the dead were buried in unhallowed ground. 
It played directly upon the tenderest feelings of the people; it 
appealed to the terrors of the superstitious and was expected to 
create a public sentiment which would bring the king to terms. 
Innocent had recently used the interdict with great effectiveness 
against Philip II. ; but John paid little attention to the murmurs 
of his peoi^le and at once struck back at the pope by confiscating 
the property of the churchmen who obeyed the interdict. Inno- 
cent replied by excommunicating John. John then 
Excommuni- n t t i • i 

cationof confiscated the estates of the bishops, and used the 

John, 1209. , . . . ,T- 

money to strengthen his military power. He was thus 
enabled to force the king of Scots to renew his homage and pay a 
levy to the amount of £10,000; he reduced Ireland to order; cut 
up the English district into counties, and introduced English 
laws. With the same vigorous hand he turned upon Llewelyn, 
Prince of Wales, and compelled him to submit. Thus John had 
only fattened upon the thunders of Innocent. 

Innocent, however, was now fnlly aroused, and in 1211 
announced through his envoys, Pandulf and Durand, that as his 

next and final step, he would absolve the subiects of 

The threat , . 

of deposition. John fi'om their allegiance, formally depose him, and 

John pre- ^ ' , 

tmresto summon Philip of France to carry out the decree. 

meet it. • 

John knew both men; he knew that the threat was not 

idle. He also learned that Philij^ was actually gathering an army 

in order to be ready to invade England, the moment the pope 

should give the word. At home, discontent and disaffection 

were daily spreading; the church was openly hostile; the nobles 

maintained a sullen silence which but poorly concealed the web of 

treason which they were weaving about the king; the people who 

had supported the elder Henry with such sturdy loyalty, looked on 

with cold indifference. Yet John apparently had no thought of 

yielding. His Angevin blood was up, and he began to strike 

about him in blind fury. The churchmen who defied him, he 

drove from the kingdom. He did not wait for the nobles to be 

detected in actual conspiracy. If a man had power to injure him, 

that was sufficient; his castles were seized and his family held as 



1213] JOH]Sr SUBMITS TO THE POPE 253 

hostages for his good behavior. With the peoj)le John tried a 
somewhat different course, playing directly for their confidence by 
remitting fines and abolishing vexatious customs, and although in 
this he succeeded but indifferently, England was overawed ; his 
enemies at home were paralyzed, and an "enormous host" gath- 
ered at his call to resist the threatened invasion. Abroad he had 
also secured an alliance with the old allies of Richard, Otto IV. 
and Ferrand, count of Flanders, who had their own quarrel with 
both Philip and Innocent and stood ready to invade France the 
moment Philip should sail for England. The outlook was not 
inviting to Philip; it was not altogether gloomy for John. He 
was fully prepared to defy the threat of deposition as he had 
defied the interdict and the excommunication, and apparently with 
a fair chance of success. 

Then suddenly at the very moment when the Curia had 
decreed the deposition, and the legate was on the way to England, 

John made that strange move which it is custom- 
froni'^1213'^'^^ ary to interpret sometimes as an exhibition of 

despicable weakness, and sometimes as an" exhibition 
of remarkable and farsighted statesmanship. It is said that 
in spite of John's habit of scoffing at religion, he really feared 
the papal excommunication ; that like all base natures he was 
capable of a groveling superstition, and that this weakness had been 
recently played upon by an alleged prophecy of Peter of Wake- 
field, a hermit, who had declared that within the year John would 
cease to be king. It is altogether probable that such elements had 
some influence upon John's determination, but it is also certain 
that more than pope or hermit, the thing which caused John to 
draw back was his assurance of a secret coalition between Philip 
and his own barons. Five of his bishops and many of his nobles 
had already fled the country and were with Philip. John 
knew that they had many friends at home; that the very army 
which he had gathered on Barham Down was honeycombed with 
treason, and that the landing of Philip would be the signal for 
general revolt. The pope, however, was the bond which held this 
coalition together; to remove the pope from the alliance, would 
leave Philip without moral support for his enterprise; while to 



254 THE GREAT CHARTER [john 

secure the active friendship of the pope, would turn Philip's Eng- 
lish allies, John's subjects, from dutiful servants of the church 
into rebels and schismatics. This was the problem which con- 
fronted John, and with characteristic unscrupulousness he 
solved it. 

On the 15th of May, 1213, John met Pandulf , the papal legate, 
near Dover and made his submission. He "accepted Langton as 
archbishop, undertook to repay certain enormous sums 
homage tn which he had recently exacted from the churches," and 
Mavls^ms rss^ore the estates which he had ruined. He then sur- 
rendered his kingdoms to the see of Eome, and received 
them again as the pope's vassal, agreeing also to pay a tribute of 
1,000 marks a year.^ Innocent withdrew from the coalition and 
forbade Philip to proceed. 

The closing of the quarrel with the pope, however, by no means 
ended John's troubles. It only cleared the field for the greater 
issue of his reign, which was now at hand. Matters on 
issue of the continent had gone too far to be stopped by the 

word of the pope. Fighting soon began between Philip 
and the Flemings. John sought to assist his allies by sending 
over his half-brother, William Longsword, Earl of Salisbury, to 
destroy Philip' s shipping in the harbor of Damme; but when he 
called upon his barons to prepare for an invasion of France, upon 
one pretext or another they refused; the northern barons putting 
themselves squarely on the ground that the king had no right to 
demand military service out of the kingdom. In the 
'^tst'^Ah^^ meantime a great council which was called to meet at 
^213' ^"^' "*' ^^' ^^bans in August for the purpose of estimating the 
damages which church property had received during the 
recent quarrel, provided an opportunity for a free discussion of the 
condition of the realm, the failure of the king to fulfill his prom- 
ises of good government, and his numerous invasions of the legal 
rights of the barons. 

Most of the encroachments of which the barons complained 



' See Roger of Wendover (years, 1208-1214) in Lee, Source Book of 
English History, pp. 155-164. 



1303-1213] JOHN'S EXACTIONS 255 

were the natural results of uew conditions which confronted the 
crown. The old regular feudal revenues had long been inadequate 
Theun-onas ^° meet the needs of government, and the king had been 
tfamns forced to develop new sources of income in order to 

defray the Increasing expense of administration. Under 
Henry II. the offices of state had been bought and sold like ordi- 
nary fiefs; Itichard had driven a flourishing trade in the favors of 
government, nor had he recognized any limit to the possibilities of 
sale and purchase, save the depth of the would-be purchaser's 
pocket. But John had surpassed all his predecessors in devising 
new and burdensome methods of wringing money from his sub- 
jects. In the first year of his reign he had raised the carucage, tlie 
new tax upon land levied by Richard, from two to three shillings 
on the carucate; the scutage, also, he raised from twenty shillings 
to two marks. In 1203 he had exacted a seventh of the movable 
property of the barons under pretext of the war in Normandy, 
and when the barons became convinced that John did not intend to 
fight, and returned home in disgust, he declared their lands for- 
feited by desertion and allowed them to be redeemed again only by 
the payment of an enormous fine. In 1207 the king demanded a 
thirteenth of the movable propertv^f the entire kingdom, and 
when his brother Geoffrey of Ywk protested and the church 
refused outright to pay the levy, John sent Geoffrey into exile and 
exacted the tax notwithstanding. In other ways also, no less 
annoying, John had taken advantage of his position to plunder his 
barons. The right of conferring the heiresses of his vassals in 
marriage, he had used as a convenient method of enriching his own 
creatures. If the heiress refused the king's choice, and sometimes 
he sought out the most unlikely husband that he could find for 
this very object, in accordance with feudal law the king was 
entitled to exact a heavy fine. He also took advantage of the 
right of wardship to plunder the property of the helpless minor, 
not only exhausting the estate, but withholding it from the heir as 
long as possible. 

The barons, however, were not the only sufferers from John's 
tyrannies. His hand had been heavy on the churchmen who had 
remained faithful to the order during the quarrel with the pope. 



256 THE GREAT CHARTER [johs 

He had not hesitated to put to a cruel death an archdeacon of Nor- 
wich who had withdrawn from his presence at the time of the 
excommunication.^ The people also had felt the grievous 

(jrt^ C'l) a/IX CCS 

of other burden of the carucage and the repeated taxation of the 

f'lCtSS€'S 

movable property of the kingdom. The entire adminis- 
tration of Justice had been used as an engine of extortion; fines 
and confiscations were frequent and the threat of them often 
used to levy blackmail. John's rapacity, moreover, was not the 
least unattractive element of his character. His meanness, 
his treachery to his friends, his inordinate lust, are beyond 
description. 

The barons and the people, therefore, were not without cause of 
grievance. One marvels that a warlike race should eudure so long 
Leraibasis ^^^^ ^^ patiently this despicable tyrant. It can be 
'^toijit'of^ explained only by the wide iufluence and patient firm- 
the barons, ness of Geoffrey Fitz-Peter, the justiciar. John hated 
Geoffrey as he hated Hubert Walter, the best testimony to their 
integrity and faithfulness; yet Geoffrey was indispensable and John 
had had the shrewdness and self-control to keep Geoffrey at his 
post. Matters, however, were now fast approaching a crisis; the 
more serious as Geoffrey himself appears as the spokesman of the 
barons. The men who surrounded the justiciar, like him, had 
been trained in the school of Henry II., and fully appreciated the 
moral advantage of finding some standard, some definite legal 
ground upon which to base their complaints against John. At St. 
Albans, therefore, Geoffrey Fitz-Peter formally proclaimed the 
laws of Henry I., as the basis "of the good customs which 
were to be restored." Few knew just what these laws were; 
yet the demand served as a rallying cry; and when three 

weeks later, at a second meeting of the barons held 
St. Paul's, at St. Paul's in London, the new archbishop, Lang- 

jLlin 25 1213. 

ton, brought forth the forgotten charter of Henry 
I., the long-needed weapon was put into the hands of the popular 
party. "By this" declared the archbishop, "you can bring back 
the liberties which have been lost, to their former condition." In 

1 Green, H. E. P., I, p. 233. 



1313, 1214] THE CRISIS 257 

this definite form the demand of the barons was laid before the 
king.^ 

Geoffrey Fitz-Peter did not long survive the council of London. 
To the king his death was irreparable; yet far from appreciating 

his loss, John only gave utterance to the brutal words : 
DmUilP^' "When he gets to hell, let him go and salute Hubert 
o'ct'Pim Walter; for by God's feet, now am I for the first time 

king and lord of England." To the barons the death 
of Fitz-Peter must have seemed like a calamity; and when John 
named as his new justiciar, the foreign favorite Peter des Eoches, 
the bishop of Winchester, they knew that there was none to 
stand between them and the tyrant. Another council had been 
summoned on November 7, to meet at Oxford. In addition to 
those ordinarily called, each sheriff had been directed to send four 
discreet knights from his shire to "discuss the business of the 
kingdom with the king." ^ Beyond this important provision how- 
ever, we do not know that anything was accomplished, or in fact 
that the council was ever actually held. So the eventful year 1213 
closed. The rival parties seemed to be marking time. 

On the continent, however, events were moving rapidly to a 
crisis. The long talked of alliance of England with Otto IV. and the 

count of Flanders, who still had their old quarrel with 
^'efmtedat P^^ilip? was about to bear fruit in a joint invasion of 
Bnuvine><, Fraucc. It was the critical moment in the history of 

English liberty. If the allies succeeded in crushing 
Philip, then John might return and settle with his barons at his 
leisure. Yet the barons hardly seemed to realize what John's suc- 
cess would mean to them. Some of the southern barons as loyal 
as ever responded to his call and followed him to Poitou. It is 
true the northern barons who had been present at St. Paul's took 
their stand upon the ground assumed in 1213, and refused to serve 
out of the kingdom; but their action was due to a lack of 

1 Lee, Source Book, p. 165 and 124-127. 

^ At St. Albans the reeve and four legal men from each township in 
the royal demesne had been summoned with the barons to assist in esti- 
mating the damages to church property. They probably acted only as 
witnesses. 



358 THE GREAT CHARTER [john 

interest in the quarrel, rather than to any just comprehension of 
the remoter issue. The great alliance, however, proved a signal 
failure. On the 27th of July, 1214, the Germans, Flemings, and 
English, led by Otto IV., Ferraud, and Earl William of Salisbury, 
met Philip on the fatal field of Bouvines. Ferrand and 
Bouvines the earl of Salisbury were both taken; Otto retired 

July 27, 1214. _ ^ -^ _ ' _ 

with a pitiful remnant of his German knights, his 
power so shattered that his influence at home rapidly waned before 
the rising prestige of his young rival, Frederick 11. In the mean- 
while John had attempted a diversion in the west, in the hope of 
regaining a foothold in the French provinces which he had forfeited 
in 1204. He had won some unimportant advantages in Poitou; 
but the defeat of his allies compelled him to retire beyond the 
Loire and make a truce with Philip for five years. The great 
coalition, which Richard had built up by the expenditure of so 
much English wealth, had dashed itself to pieces upon the pikemen 
of Philip, and with it passed away the last hope of John of ever 
wresting from the hand of Philip the lands which he had seized 
ten years before. The permanent possession by the French king 
of Normandy, Anjou, Touraine, and Poitou was secure. 

John did not return to England until the autumn. But he 
had not forgotten the northern barons and came back with the 

avowed purpose of calling them to an account. The 
The meeting , , i ,i ■ t -, . 

at St. Ed- barons, however, knew their man and were prepared to 

meet him. Late in November they met in the minster 
of St. Edmunds under the color of a pilgrimage, and secretly bound 
themselves before the great altar to compel the king to restore the 
liberties of the realm and confirm the act by a charter given under 
his seal; if he refused, they would withdraw their allegiance and 
appeal to arms.^ 

Soon after Christmas a deputation of the barons laid their 
propositions before the king. He asked for time and promised to 
respond on the first Sunday after Easter. He had, 
paresfor however, no idea of submission and set himself to pre- 
pare for resistance. He sought first to detach the 
bishops from the popular cause, and on the 15th of January issned 
' Lee, pp. 165, 166. 



1315] THE CHARTER SIGNED 259 

a charter in which he granted the church freedom from the inter- 
ference of the crown in "the election of all prelates whatsover, 
greater or less."^ Langton, however, was too wise and farseeing 
to be caught by John's blandishments and stoutly refused to 
accept any terms for the church, which did not also include the 
barons. The king in the meanwhile was swelling the ranks of 
his foreign mercenaries by enlistments in Brabant and Poitou; he 
fortified and provisioned his castles; he required his tenants to 
renew their homage and directed the oath of allegiance to be 
taken by all freemen throughout England. He also sought to 
secure the support of the pope by assuming the obligations of a 
crusader ; an act which put him under the special protection of the 
church. 

In March the barons gathered at Stamford, and with a dignity and 
self-possession worthy of the greatness of their cause calmly waited 

for the expiration of the truce. They then marched 
the charter, into Northamptonshire and on the 27th of April lay 

encamped at Brackley. Here Langton and William 
Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, met them as envoys from the king and 
asked their demands. In reply they drew up a series of articles, 
known as the "Articles of the Barons," ^ and dispatched them to the 
king. John read the demands and angrily exclaimed: "Why do 
they not ask for my kingdom? I will never grant such liberties as 
will make me a slave." When the answer came back, the barons, 
now two thousand strong and numbering representatives of the 
greatest houses of England, broke camp and marched upon Lon- 
don. John was still surrounded by many of the older barons; 
men like William Marshal, whose sympathies were with the rising, 
but who feared the anarchy of civil war and preferred to gain 
their point in a quieter way by bringing pressure to bear upon the 
king within the lines of the constitution. The nation, however, was 
against John and when on the 24th of May "the Army of God 
and the Holy Church," as the barons styled themselves, entered 
London in the midst of the wildest enthusiasm, the king's most 
trusted followers, even the members of his household, saw that his 

^ Gee and Hardy, Documents, etc., pp. 77-79. 
2Stubbs, S. C, 290-296. 



260 THE GKEAT CHARTEE [john 

cause was hopeless and abandoned him. Cunning and unscrupu- 
lous as John was, supported only by Flemish mercenaries and a few 
foreign favorites, he saw that further resistance would be madness, 
and when the Articles of the Barons in a revised form were again 
submitted to him, he signed them and attached the great seal. 
This historic event took place at Eunnymede, near Windsor, on 
the 15th of June, 1215. 

So at last was secured the priceless document, known in 
distinction from all other charters as the Great CJiarter. The 

importance of this famous document can hardly be 
^harta exaggerated. It was "the first great legislative act of 

the English nation," and, supplemented by the later 
Petition of Right and Bill of Rights, it constitutes the legal foun- 
dation of Anglo-Saxon liberties. In form it was a grant similar to 
previous charters of English kings, issued by the favor of the 
crown to all "our faithful subjects." In theory it was a restate- 
ment of the customary laws of feudal England as they had 
been recognized by her Norman and Angevin kings. In fact it 
was a list of rights and liberties forced upon the king by his sub- 
jects; and since it defined in legal form the relations of king and 
people, and imposed upon the subjects the task of deposing him 
as a sacred duty in case he violated these relations, it virtually 
asserted the principle that the king was subject to the laws of the 
realm as well as his meanest vassal. 

An analysis of the sixty-three articles of the Charter shows that 
little had escaped the barons.^ The church was "to be free" and 

have its newly granted rights. The feudal obligations 
theCharUr ^^ ^^® barons were carefully specified, and the dues 

which the king might justly demand were carefully 
defined and limited ; as carefully also were limited the rights of the 
king over his wards. The administration of justice, which in 
unscrupulous hands had only too often degenerated into tyranny, 
was to conform to right and law. The penalty of crime 
must conform to the grade of the offense. Judges must be 
selected for their legal knowledge and probity. Suitors in com- 

' For analysis of Charter and review of its contents, see Taswell-Lang- 
mead, pp. 93-115. 



PEINCIPLES OF THE CONSTITUTION 261 

mon pleas should no longer be compelled to drag about over the 
country in the wake of the king's court, but were to have some 
fixed place to which they might resort. The king's justices also 
were to visit the shires four times a year, to hear and settle dis- 
putes concerning real property. Such cases, moreover, could not 
be tried out of the county in which the lands in question lay. 

Other articles bravely dealt with the fundamental principles of 
the constitution ; principles the greatness and farreaching import 
of which the barons themselves probably did not 
vru^Mes'of' '^■^^li^^ and which it has taken six hundred years to 
ttcm^^"^'^*^^" work out. In the regulation which forbade the king to 
levy scutage or extraordinary aid without the consent 
of the common council of the nation was involved the sole right of 
the parliament to levy taxes. In the regulation which required the 
king to summon to the council the archbishops, bishops, earls, and 
greater barons individually, but allowed him to summon the lesser 
tenants by general notification through the sheriff of each county, 
was involved the subsequent separation of the two houses, as well 
as the opportunity for the later development of the representative 
system. In the principle that no freeman should be imprisoned or 
sufEer other penalty, "unless by the lawful Judgment of his peers, 
or by the law of the land," and that "justice should be neither 
sold, nor denied, nor delayed," were involved the Habeas Corpus 
act, and all the other regulations by which Englishmen and Ameri- 
cans have sought to protect the individual from the abuse of the 
vast powers of the state. 

The national character of the Charter is shown by the gener- 
osity of the provisions which included all classes within its bene- 
fits. The barons agreed that the liberties which they 
National . in. i ■ j 

character of as tenants received from the king, they in turn would 

the Charter, o' .; 

observe in dealing with their own tenants. The cities 
and towns also were to have their liberties and free customs. 
London was to share in the limitations put upon aids and scutages. 
Foreign merchants were not to be interfered with, but might come 
and go without being subjected to more than the ancient customs. 
One standard of weights and measures was also prescribed for the 
whole kingdom. Even the villain came in for his share of protec- 



262 THE GREAT CHAETER [john 

tion; his agricultural implements, like the stock of the merchant 
or tradesman, were to be sheltered from the rapacity of the gov- 
ernment official. No man's grain or other property was to be 
taken by royal officials under the plea of right of purveyance 
without payment or consent of the owner; nor could land or rent 
be seized for any debt due to the crown, as long as the chattels of 
the debtor were sufficient. 

Such in brief was the famous Charter; the first attempt to 
define in a formal way the powers of the crown and the rights of 
the peojole. Its moderation is as remarkable as its 
^meChartei- t>i'6aclth and compreliensiveness. The barons had no 
wish to weaken the crown ; they fully believed that the 
established customs of the nation were sufficient guarantees of 
their rights, and these were all that they asked; but they 
demanded that these customs be observed. 

-It was much that now at last king and subjects had come to a 
formal understanding. The customs of England had been formu- 
lated and the salutary principle established, that these 

Device for . -, ^ t -, ■ 

enforcinff customs might uot be Violated even by the king. But 

the clia^ter. .jo 

how enforce this principle? By what guarantee could 
the barons protect themselves against the notorious insincerity and 
treachery of John? Former sovereigns, far better men, had not 
hesitated to break the most solemn covenants, when a sufficient 
pretext presented itself, and sometimes even without pretext. 
The barons could not expect more of John. The system of con- 
stitutional checks, so well understood and so effective to-day, had 
not yet been devised, nor was other method understood, save the 
appeal to the sword. And appeal to the sword there certainly 
would be, if John were left to himself with all his "regal power 
and dignity" intact. This was the problem, and to solve it, the 
barons devised a scheme as naive as it was impracticable. By the 
sixty-first clause of the Charter the king was made to empower the 
baronage to elect a standing committee or council of twenty-five 
barons, who were to keep watch upon the king and his officers, 
and demand instant redress in case any of the provisions 
were violated. If the king within forty days should not 
give satisfactory redress, then "the five and twenty barons, 



1215] "WAR OF JOHN WITH THE BARONS 263 

together with the commonalty of the whole land" were authorized 
by the king to make war upon him, until the grievance should be 
satisfied. The king further pledged: "as to all those in the land 
who will not of their own account swear to Join the five and twenty 
barons in distraining and distressing us, we will issue orders to 
make them take the same oath as aforesaid." This rude device 
which imposed upon John's subjects rebellion as a sacred duty, 
and placed over the sovereign as John declared, "four and twenty 
kings," could not be satisfactory for the simple reason that no 
government could long survive under such conditions. 

The immediate conduct of John, however, justified all the sus- 
picions of the barons and soon gave his "four and twenty kings" 
their hands full. Evidently he had not been sincere 

inUrfereiwe f gr a single moment ; as soon as the barons had returned 
of the pope. t> ' 

to their homes, he sent off Pandulf the papal legate post 
haste to persuade the pope to free him from his oath. The pope 
at heart was not unfriendly to the cause of English liberties, but 
he looked upon the struggle solely from the point of view of his 
interests as overlord, and Pandulf easily persuaded him that the 
barons in curtailing the powers of the crown, were seriously harm- 
ing his interests. Moreover, technically, by feudal law any diffi- 
culties between the king and his vassals ought to have been first 
referred to the overlord for settlement. The pope accordingly 
granted John the dispensation; threatened the barons with excom- 
munication because they had levied war upon a crusader, and 
finally suspended Langton. 

John in the meanwhile was busily preparing for war, and by 
the end of harvest was ready to take the field. He sent a body of 

foreign mercenaries under Falkes de Breaute to waste 
Johnandhis the lauds of the barons, while he himself, ravaging as he 

advanced, marched into Scotland to punish the Scot 
king, Alexander, for supporting his enemies. It was a serious 
moment for the Charter. The suspension of Langton removed the 
only man who was able to hold together the many diverse elements 
of the popular party. The more conservative of the barons, men 
like Pembroke and Chester, who had left John only at the last 
moment, were inclined to draw back, while the younger men, the 



264 THE GREAT CHARTEE [john 

hotheads, were determined to fight the matter out. Thus the war 
rapidly degenerated into a struggle of factious, in which the pop- 
ular party continued to disintegrate and John's ranks swelled cor- 
respondingly. 

The barons who held out, however, were soon in a sad plight; 
their estates were ruined, their castles destroyed, and their wives 

and children were lying in John's dungeons as hostages. 
irivitedto"^'^^ In their desperation they finally renounced their alle- 
erowre"*''^ giauce altogether, and invited Louis, the son of Philip, 

to come over and assume the English crown. Louis, it 
will be remembered, had married John's niece, Blanche of Castile, 
and by feudal law, in default of John and his male heirs, Louis's 
right to the English crown through his wife might be recognized. 
Philip chose to regard the claim as founded upon good law and in 
spite of the threats of the pope, espoused the cause of the barons, 
and in November hurried off a detachment of 7,000 men to aid 
them, reinforcing it at times during the winter and spring. John, 
however, in spite of the French help, continued to make head 
against his foes, and with the fall of Colchester in March, London 
remained almost the only place of importance in their hands. 

In May, the arrival of Prince Louis gave a new phase to 
the war. Up to this point John had shown considerable military 

skill. His energy had been magnificent. The strength 
Loute^im'^ and vigor of his blows had appalled the stoutest. But 

now John began to display that want of resolution in 
the presence of great emergency, so characteristic of the man, but 
a new element in the Angevin character. When he heard of the 
landing of Prince Louis at Thanet, he at once broke camp and 
retired to Winchester. Louis marched upon London and was 
received by the people with loud acclamations. From London he 
advanced upon Winchester. John's French mercenaries who con- 
stituted his main strength, refused to fight against their king's 
son, and John could do nothing but waste the country and 
retire before Louis. Winchester fell, and Louis laid siege 
to Windsor and Dover. Alexander came from Scotland to do 
him homage and the northern lords followed his example; then 
the southern earls began to come in and finally John's half-brother, 



1316] DEATH OF JOHN 265 

William of Salisbury, made his submission. John's kingdom 
was fast slipping from him ; he could not bring his mercenaries 
to meet Louis in the open field, although they were perfectly will- 
ing to rove up and down the country in John's train, burning and 
plundering English homes and butchering the people. This, how- 
ever, did John little good, and soon even his friends were disgusted 
with the lawlessness of his followers. 

As the summer approached everything was going Louis's way. 

But ere it had passed, unmistakable signs of a second reaction 

began to appear. Hubert de Burgh had succeeded in 

John, tictn- holding Dover against every attempt of Louis; Windsor 

her 19 1216. °, ° J r -> 

also held out. The barons, moreover, began to doubt the 
security of their position, should Louis be too successful. Still 
the fear of John was superior to all other motives and Louis's party 
continued to hold together. But suddenly in the midst of new 
successes of the royal party, the whole aspect of the struggle was 
changed by the removal of John himself, according to tradition, 
the result of a surfeit of new cider and green peaches. 

"History has set upon John's character a darker and deeper 
mark than she has on any other king. He was in every way the 

worst of the whole list; the most vicious, the most 
inUstwi'^^ profane, the most tyrannical, the most false, the most 

shortsighted, the most unscrupulous."^ And yet had 
John been less of a brute, had it been possible to live with 
him upon any conditions, it is likely that the struggle would 
never have taken such definite form, or the principles of the 
Charter become so promptly established as the fundamental law of 
England. It was John's hopelessly base nature, that made the 
Charter a necessity, and left it to succeeding generations as the 
monument of his reign. 

^ Stubbs, The Early Plantagenets, p. 160. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE STEUGGLE FOR THE CHARTER 

HENRY III., 1216-1265 

FAMILY OF JOHN LACKLAND 

John = Isabella 
k. 1199-1216 I of Angouleme 



Henry III. = Eleanor Joan Eleanor= ] J ^™?^"ii\^j;?J|^!,-.. Richard, 

k. 1316-1272 I of m. ' ^ fc)nnon de JVIonttort ^^j.^ ^f 

Provence Alexander II. Cornwall, 

of Scotland King of the 

i \ ' [ Romans, 

Edward I. Edmund Crouchback, Margaret = Alexander III. d. 1271 

k. 1272-1307 Earl of Lancaster, of Scotland 

d. 1296 

A great forward step had now been taken by England in secur- 
ing a basis upon which the relations of crown and people might be 
formally worked out. A precedent had been estab- 

Thc stTuonle 

for the lished ; a system or program had been accepted which 

embodied in definite formulae the rights of the subject 
and the powers of the government. Ideas, heretofore only vaguely 
floating in men's minds, had been crystallized into the formal terms 
of a public document ; they could never again be lost or forgotten. 
Yet the Charter was by no means secure. Its provisions, after all, 
were as yet only the platform of a party. Much depended upon 
John's successor ; much more depended upon the clearness with 
which new leaders should grasp the principles of the Charter, and 
the courage with which they should uphold them. This struggle 
is the theme of the next sixty years of English history. 

Stephen Langton, soon after his suspensioii, had hastened to 
Rome to put a fair statement of the quarrel before the pope and 
had not .yet returned. His absence was now doubly 
^nnmicdai deplored. The Charter, however, found a new friend in 
October 28^ a quarter where perhaps it was least expected. William 
Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, was the recognized head of 
the conservative party of the barons who had clung to John, and, 
although they had supported the demand for the Charter in 1215, 

266 



1216] THE FIKST REISSUE OF THE CHARTER 267 

had refused to make war upon him. Within ten days after his 
death, therefore, they brought out and crowned at Gloucester the 
young Prince Henry, John's eldest son. They also appointed Pem- 
broke "governor of the king and the kingdom," but entrusted 
the person of the king to the care of Peter des Roches. The 
supporters of Henry, however, were not wedded to John's ways, 
and it required no great foresight to see that the only hope of the 
yonng king of ever ruling over his father's kingdom, lay in the 
absolute and immediate abandonment of his father's policy. To 
show the people, therefore, that John's policy had died with him, 
Pembroke at once reissued the Charter, in a modified 
of Charter, form to be sure, but nevertheless the Charter. The 
most important change was the omission of the clauses 
which made the consent of the barons necessary to the levy of an 
unusual aid. The new government was at war with its own sub- 
jects; a foreign prince supported by a powerful army was in the 
field, and at so critical a time the new governor of the kingdom 
might well hesitate to tie his hands, or acknowledge the powers of 
a group of men the most of whom were in actual rebellion. Yet 
the first clause of the modified charter declared that the omitted 
articles were only suspended by reason of the present emergency, 
and that they should be considered later. Gualo, the new papal 
legate, and Peter des Roches had also borne no small part in secur- 
ing the reissue of the Charter, as the first step toward the pacifica- 
tion of the country. Sworn as was the one to the interests of his 
papal master, and devoted as was the other to the interests of John 
and his son, both saw that the moment had come for compromise 
and conciliation. 

The first year was fully occupied by the struggle with Louis. 
The military advantage was all against Henry, but patriotic cur- 
rents were running high. The old hatred of the Eng- 
witiiLswis'^ lishman for the foreigner kindled again under wild 
rumors of French brutality. The young king had no 
personal enemies. His very youth, his misfortunes, appealed to 
the awakening loyalty of the people. The independence of the 
realm was at stake. The liberties of the people surely would be 
far safer under one of their own princes, than under this French- 



268 THE STRUGGLE FOR THE CHARTER [henby in. 

man, whose ancestors had always and at all times been the enemies 
of England. Gualo, staunch to the interest which he had now taken 
up, thundered his excommunications against those who supported 
the French in their nnholy cause. A new and powerful moral 
influence, moving in ten thousand hidden currents, was thus rapidly 
setting against Louis. In May 1217 Pembroke beat the French 
in an absurd battle at Lincoln, known as "The Fair of Lincoln," 
so easy was the victory and so rich the plunder. In August the 
Fair of Lincoln was eclipsed by another victory off Dover, in which 
Hubert de Burgh with a small fleet of forty ships completely over- 
whelmed the French fleet, and thus destroyed Louis's last chance of 
getting reinforcements. The victory was due partly to the superior 
seamanship of the English sailors, and partly to the simple expe- 
dient of throwing quicklime into the faces of the French, as the 
English bore down upon them from the weather side. This battle 
of Dover practically settled the war; Louis thought only of mak- 
ing his escape from the country. 

The treaty of peace was signed at Lambeth, September 11, 
1217. The same dignity and moderation, so characteristic of all 
Treaty of ^^^^ bears the touch of Pembroke's great soul, mark 
September ^^^^ treaty, which was "almost as important as the 
11,1217. Great Charter itself." It secured a general amnesty, 

and provided for the restitution of all forfeited property. Ten 
thousand marks were paid to Louis to meet the expenses which he 
had incurred in undertaking the war. Thus Pembroke sought to 
lay the foundations of a lasting peace by restoring all parties to 
the conditions which prevailed at the opening of the year 1215. 
In a few weeks Louis, after receiving the absolution of the legate 
as one guilty of an ecclesiastical offence, quitted the kingdom for 
good. 

Pembroke was now free to address himself to the reorganization 
of the kingdom on the basis of the Charter. He had not only 
averted the danger of another foreign conquest; he had 
Second re- saved England from the horrors of long-continued 
Charter, 1217. domestic anarchy. The treaty of Lambeth was imme- 
diately followed by a second reissue of the Charter, and 
also by the issue of a supplementary charter, known as the Charter 



1317] THE CHARTER OF THE FORESTS 269 

of the Forests, which became almost as popular as the earlier work 
of the barons. In the reissued Charter the clause restricting the 
taxing power of the king was still held in abeyance ; illegal castles, 
which had risen again as in the wars of Stephen's reign, were 
to be destroyed; the itinerant justices were to make one instead of 
four circuits a year. The Charter of the Forests included the 
forest regulations of the original charter which had been omitted 
from the first reissue, and also certain new regulations which 
relieved the people of many hardships. The boundaries of the 
forests were always more or less indefinite, and the constant 
tendency of the forest courts had been to extend these bound- 
aries. By the new Charter the forests were to be restored to 
the limits which had been recognized in the time of Henry 
II. ; and much of the legal chicanery by which the forest courts 
were accustomed to draw the helpless people into their toils, 
was abolished. No measure of Earl William's administration 
was more popular; and long after his death, when the cry for 
the "confirmation of the charters" was raised by the nation, 
it was Earl William's charters of the "year 1317 that the people 
demanded. 

At the close of the year Gualo retired and Pandulf was again 
appointed legate. Gualo had administered his high office in tlie 

main with wisdom and discretion, and although he had 
Pandulf and been somewhat overeager to levy fines and confiscations 

in the name of his spiritual lord, no small credit is due to 
him for his staunch support of Pembroke in restoring the kingdom 
to order and putting into practice the principles of the Charter. 
The new legate had nothing of Gualo's keen insight into existing 
conditions. He possessed, moreover, a dangerously energetic tem- 
perament and was imbued with the idea that he was to govern Eng- 
land as a dependent province of Eome. His overbearing disposition 
also soon brought him into conflict with Langton who had returned 
to England soon after the death of Innocent and was again at his 
post. But Langton's influence with the new pope, Honorius III., 
finally prevailed ; Pandulf was recalled and Langton obtained the 
promise that during his lifetime no resident legate should be 
appointed in England. 



270 THE STEUGGLE FOE THE CHAETER [henry in. 

In 1219 Earl William died. He is the "grand old man" of 
this era. He had been identified with every great political move- 
ment since 1173. If he had supported John it was not 
hrokc%w^^ because he loved tyranny, but because he feared baronial 
violence. He represented the great conservative 
thought of the nation, and because he was able at last to marshal 
this element in support of the Charter, he made the final triumph 
of the popular cause possible. His place could not be easily filled, 
nor did the council attempt to appoint a new "governor." 
Hubert de Burgh, the hero of Dover, had been jnsticiar since 
1215, and the chief place in the administration naturally fell to 
him. He had never been in sympathy with the restrictions of the 
royal power as they had been set forth in the Charter; bnt he 
believed in good government, and threw himself with all the confi- 
dence and vigor of a successful soldier into the task of complet- 
ing the work of Earl William. 

Hubert, however, was a very different man from the gentle 
earl. He had nothing of his patience and little of his tact in deal- 
ing with rebellious vassals. He saw, moreover, what 
^e'surah possibly William had seen before his death, that the 
time for conciliation was passing and that the moment 
was at hand when the new government might no longer shrink 
from putting its authority to the test, but that it must deal vigor- 
ously with the barons who still refused to surrender their strong- 
holds. 'The feudal lords must submit to Henry III. as they had 
once submitted to Henry II. ;' the foreigners whom John had put in 
charge of his castles and who still held them, must be removed and 
the strongholds which they had turned into instruments of 
"tyranny and oppression," must be given back again to the king. 
The most conspicuous of these tardy barons were William of 
Aumale and Falkes de Breante. Aumtlle was of the old French- 
English baronage which had rooted itself in the soil since 

CJTJtJOSi/il/Q 

elements in the CouQuest. His grandfather was that William of 

the baro7iage. ^ ^ 

Aumale who had defied Henry of Anjou when he began 
the restoration of the kingdom after the close of Stephen's stormy 
reign. Falkes de Breaute was one of the horde of ruffian adven- 
turers whom John had introduced into England in order to 



1219, 1320] HIJBEET DE BURGH 271 

support his tottering throne. He was a Norman by birth, but 
had been driven out of Normandy for his crimes and had found 
congenial occupation in marshalling John's mercenaries. John 
had rewarded him by bestowing upon him a rich heiress; he had 
also made him sheriff of six English counties and given into his 
keeping many of his castles, including Bedford, one of the most 
formidable strongholds of England. Pembroke perhaps would not 
have hesitated to attack Aumale or de Breaute had they stood 
alone. But there were many other powerful barons who, like Ralph 
of Chester, held aloof from the new government and would 
undoubtedly have taken alarm, had the regent attempted to coerce 
one of their number. There was also within the council itself a pow- 
erful foreign influence, headed by the quondam Justiciar of John, 
Peter des Roches, who had been a knight, a politician, and a mis- 
chief-maker generally, before he had taken orders, and had not so 
far abandoned his old profession, that he could not use his present 
position secretly to encourage the barons to defy the regent in 
order to build up a foreign party in the court. 

As a preliminary step to the assertion of the royal authority, 
at Whitsuntide of the year 1220, Hubert with the support of 

Langton had Henry recrowned at Westminster amid 
^serts'me gi'^at pomp and splendor. It was to be the signal that 
ttT^s'o'*'"" ^^^® kii^g ^^d been restored to full possession of the 

royal dignity. Armed with a bull from Honorius which 
demanded the surrender of the castles, Hubert then proceeded 
against Aumale, and although he succeeded at last, it was not 
until Aumale had resisted the whole force of the government for 
nearly a year. By this time, also, the other barons were fully 
aroused, and appearing before the king, with Bishop Peter as 
spokesman, formally accused Hubert of treason. They then 
retired to Leicester. The justiciar in the name of the king 
appealed to the nation and gathered a rival force at Northampton. 
Langton also entered the lists and issued a formal excommuni- 
cation against the rebellious barons. This "array of force and 
authority" overawed the malcontents; and one by one they sur- 
rendered their castles and made their peace with the justiciar. 
Falkes de Breaute, however, remained defiant and Hubert deter- 



272 THE STKUGGLE FOR THE CHARTEK [henkyIII. 

mined to complete his success by either destroying him or driving 
him out of the country. But he took his own time, and waited 
patiently until some overt act of de Breaute or his men should 
leave no question of the justice of his position. In 1224, the occa- 
sion came. William, a brother of de Breaute, who held Bedford 
in his name, seized and imprisoned one of the royal justices. 
Hubert at once accepted the challenge, marched against Bedford, 
and after two months' siege, took it and hanged William and some 
eighty of his men on the walls. Such prompt and vigorous measures 
thoroughly cowed the barons who still retained any sympathy 
with de Breaute. De Breaute himself was glad to leave the coun- 
try; Bishop Peter also lost his influence for the time, left the 
council, and soon after departed for a Crusade. 

For three years Hubert continued to rule the kingdom with 
vigor and success. But in 1227 Henry, who had entered upon his 

twenty-first year, declared his purpose of assuming the 
becomes of government himself. Personally the young king was 

clean and upright, without any of his father's personal 
wickedness ; but unfortunately he was possessed with an exaggerated 
estimate of his own abilities as an executive, always coupled with a 
slavish deference to the papacy. He was, moreover, easily led by 
the favorite of the hour and inclined, like most weak natures in 
high positions, to be suspicious of the influence of strong men. 
Hubert continued to act as justiciar; but the king was incapable 
of appreciating his sterling worth, or the value of his past serv- 
ices. 

In 1228 Hubert lost his best and wisest supporter in the death 
of Langton, who as no other English statesman of the time, even 

Pembroke not excepted, had risen to the full concep- 
Thetrnuhies ^|qi^ gf ^y^q constitutional monarchy. He had unflinch- 

ingly upheld the liberties of all classes against the king; 
yet he had as staunchly defended the crown when the barons pro- 
posed to deprive the king of his legal and just powers. As no 
other man he stood for the national rights of the English people. 
His death left Hubert to struggle on alone under his burdens. 
The task had long since proved thankless, for the king had early 
shown alarming signs of treading in his father's footsteps. His 



1228, 1229] FALL OF HUBEET DE BUEGH 273 

very first act was to insist that all charters or grants made in his 
name during his minority, should be regarded as invalid, until 
confirmation had been purchased by the beneficiary. Other acts as 
ill-omened of the future followed. Hubert, loyal to the last, 
found himself driven to adopt the policy of his predecessors, 
Hubert Walter and Geoffrey Fitz-Peter ; like them he deliberately 
sacrificed his own popularity to save the reputation of his master. 
When he could, he lightened the burdens of the people, but only 
in the end to forfeit the favor of the ungrateful king. 

The troubles of Hubert began soon after the death of Langton. 
The pope, Gregory IX., at the time was in the midst of the 

struggle with the Hohenstaufen which had been 
Hubert renewed soon after the death of Innocent III. As a 

result the papal budget had enormously increased, and 
the ordinary revenue of the papal see, although supplemented by 
the Peter's Pence, was no longer sufficient for its needs. Henry 
at his coronation in 1216, had formally done homage to Gualo as 
the representative of the pope ; and again in 1220, at the second 
coronation, the sponsors of the young king had thought it neces- 
sary first to await the command of the papal overlord. The 
tribute of 1,000 marks which John had promised had also been 
regularly paid. The pope, therefore, had every reason to regard 
as established the papal overlordship which had now for nearly 
fifteen years passed without a challenge, and in 1229 demanded 
a tenth of all property, both lay and ecclesiastical, to assist him in 
prosecuting his wars. The demand brought the papal overlord- 
ship home to the barons, and when the matter was brought up in 
the council, voices were loudly raised in protest. The pope dared 
not push the demand upon the laity, but he compelled the church 
to submit. Eventually it became the established custom for the 
clergy to set aside one-tenth of their yearly income for the pope, 
annates^ besides the entire income of each benefice during the first 
year after w^^ointmewi, first fruits. Popular feeling ran high, and 
a quickening national sentiment found voice in a definite protest 
against the impoverishment of the nation in order to carry on wars 
in which England had no interest. The papal collectors were 
plundered ; their stores burned. The king whose sympathies were 



274 THE STRUGGLE FOR THE CHARTER [hknkyIII. 

all with the pope, was grieved and angry ; and when the justiciar 
failed to punish the perpetrators of these outrages, he charged him 
with conniving at the excesses of the populace. Henry in truth 
was already tired of his minister. Peter des Eoches, moreover, 
who had just returned from his crusading venture, and who was as 
unscrupulous and ambitious as ever, easily made the king believe 
that Hubert's dishonesty was the cause of the lean treasury and 
that he was abetting those who were opposing the papal exac- 
tions. At last in July, 1232, des Roches had the satisfaction of 
seeing his old rival driven from the council, like Becket over- 
whelmed with a mass of unfounded charges, and his lands taken 
from him. Hubert de Burgh was the last of the great justiciars. 
Inferior men succeeded him. The political functions of the office 
passed to the chancellor and in the next reign the office itself was 
virtually abolished by the breaking up of the Curia into three 
distinct and separate courts. 

Peter des Roches was now supreme in the council ; and when- 
ever a valuable appointment was to be filled the king apparently 
preferred Peter's foreign friends, adventurers mostly, 
Qiiarreiwith to his own people. A hundred years earlier such 

Henry oyer r r J 

Tvorites^ conduct on the part of the king would have been 
accepted as a matter of course, but the national feeling 
was now too strong to allow it to pass without a protest. Earl 
Ralph of Chester, the natural head of the baronage, had died in 
the year of Hubert's fall. William Marshal, the younger, had 
married a sister of the king and was not inclined to break with 
him. William's brother Richard, however, "one of the most 
accomplished knights and the most educated gentleman of the 
age," put himself at the head of the national party and persuaded 
the barons to refuse to attend any council called by tiie king at 
which Bishop Peter was present, and to demand the dismissal of 
the foreigners whom he had introduced into the king's service. 
The king under the instigation of des Roches declared Richard a 
traitor and invaded his estates. The barons insisted that he 
should be tried by his peers. Peter des Roches asserted the 
startling doctrine that there were no peers in England as there 
were in France, and that the king had full right to proscribe and 



1234] henry's personal administration 275 

condemn. Eicharcl, satisfied that lie would receive short shrift 
with Bishop Peter as his judge, in self-defense made an alliance 
with the Welsh princes. So the nation was once more drifting 
toward civil war, when Richard was decoyed into Ireland by the 
cunning minister and there slain in a skirmish. But his work was 
accomplished. The clergy had openly taken sides with the 
barons. Langton's successor, Edmund Rich, read a list of griev- 
ances to the king and declared himself ready to pronounce the 
excommunication if the king refused to heed. Henry, who was a 
coward at heart, saw himself at last like his father confronted by 
an angry nation and durst not defy the spirit which he had raised. 
He therefore dismissed des Roches and sent off the foreigners. 

Henry, however, did not propose to flatter his troublesome vas- 
sals by calling any of them to his side as ministers. If he could 
not select his own ministers, he would have none at all. 
aitemvtat '^^® measure was a serious mistake. For hitherto the 
minStraUon i^inisters had borne the brunt of the popular discon- 
tent. Now the king assumed the whole responsibility 
himself. He was extravagant, obstinate, and false. It was not 
long before a mass of grievances had rolled up which certainly 
would have appalled a wiser head. But Henry kept on, blind to 
his own utter incompetence, disgusting his people by his evasions 
and shortcomings, and laying up an account for the future. 

These grievances centered largely about the question of money. 
Henry loved power not so much for itself, as for the opportunity 
which it gave him for ostentatious display. He loved 
o/mnru"'^^^ ^^ scatter his favors in extravagant profusion ; he loved 
the glitter and show of court pageantry, and squandered 
vast sums in supporting its ceremonies. He made the brilliant 
alliances of the royal house, in particular, occasions for the display 
of his magnificence. As a result, Henry won an unfortunate repu- 
tation for wealth which was not supported by facts, but which 
nevertheless tickled his vanity and led him still deeper into this 
costly masquerading. The broken-down gentility of Europe who 
could manufacture any claim upon his bounty flocked to his court. 
Most notorious among these were the queen's two uncles, Peter of 
Savoy and Boniface, who came with a train of hungry Provengals 



276 THE STEUGGLE FOR THE CHARTER [henbtUI. 

at their heels, and secured offices and pensions at the king's 

expense. Henry for his pains was rapidly sinking into hopeless debt. 

The barons continued to grant scutages, aids, carucage, or tax 

on movables as Henry demanded. But their generosity found 

little encouragement in the financiering of the king, 

(jrTOWiHCf itll- 00/ 

patience of whose debts already exceeded four times his annual 

barons. . mi i • • t • , 1 1 

income, i he barons insisted with each grant that the 
king confirm the charters and promise redress and reforms; and 
Henry like all spendthrifts was always ready to promise when he 
needed money, only to forget again as soon as the money was in his 
hands. But the patience of the barons had its limit; the king 
was drifting rapidly near to the danger line. Beyond it, was either 
bankruptcy or civil war, probably both, with the possibility of 
ultimate deposition. 

The king at the time was preparing an expedition against Louis 

IX. of France. He had long cherished an impracticable scheme 

of resrainina: the French domains which his father had 

Henry's at- 

tempt to lost, and had already squandered the treasures of his 
footmi on the subjccts ill a wasteful war with the French for this pur- 
pose; but he had accomplished nothing, and in fact owed 
the continuance of his power in the parts of John's domain which had 
been saved from the general wreck, only to the loyalty of the Grascons, 
who did not love Henry so much as they hated and feared the French. 
The Gascon barons, moreover, were turbulent and unruly by long 
habit, and preferred the government which was remote and there- 
fore weak ; the southern merchants also found England the best 
market for their wines, the chief staple of their country. But the 
English barons took little interest in the distant struggle and were 
weary of the endless demands for scutage and other subsidies. It 
was with little satisfaction, therefore, that in 1242 they saw their 
king bent upon rushing into still another war with the French 
king. The Poitivin, Hugh de la Marche, had quarreled with Louis 
IX., and appealed to Henry for help. This Hugh was the man 
whose bride John had once carried off, the beginning of all his 
troubles. After the death of John, Hugh had successfully 
renewed his suit and was now Henry's stepfather. Henry 
regarded tlie call of Hugh as the opportunity to regain his footing 



1M2-1345] GRIEVANCES OF THE CLERGY 277 

in Poitou, and although the English barons flatly refused to grant 
the required subsidies, the headstrong king, determined to under- 
take the quest, took his army to Poitou, only to be disgracefully 
driven out of the country. Then, to exasperate the baronage still 
further, he brought back with him a rout of hungry Poitivins, his 
half-brothers and their friends, to live upon his bounty and plunder 
the realm in his name. 

The barons now began to see clearly that it was not enough to 

protest, or refuse grants. In 1244, therefore, they presented a 

formal remonstrance to the king, in which they declared 

demand con- that he had not expended their grants wisely, and de- 

tvol of <~> hJ 

appointment manded that he appoint a justiciar, a treasurer, and a 
chancellor, subject to their approval. In 1215 the 
barons had demanded only that the king's oJBficers be acquainted 
with the law ; now they demand that the affairs of the kingdom be 
administered by men directly responsible to the great council. 
The barons were thus at last feeling their way towards a right 
solution of the problem in which Langton and the elder Marshal 
had failed. The time, however, was not yet ripe for a step so rad- 
ical. The barons were not ready to break finally with the king, 
and the king evidently would not yield to their demands until 
forced by open revolt. 

The state of the clergy was far less hopeful. Like the barons 
they were subjected to numerous and heavy exactions ; but they 
were far less able to help themselves. TBe king was 
afih6d,ergv ^^^^ ^ ^^^^ "^ *^^® hands of the papal overlord, and the 
English clergy might well hesitate to raise an issue with 
the fiery and inexorable Gregory IX. His remorseless demands 
were repeated from year to year; yet the papal treasury was 
ever empty. The pope, moreover, not satisfied with direct 
taxation, by the recently assumed right of naming "provisors," 
sought to reward his Italian servants by securing for them 
appointments to English livings in advance of vacancies. In 
1231 Gregory forbade the English bishops to "present to livings" 
until provision had been made for five Italians whom he did not 
even name. In 1240 the bishops of Lincoln and Salisbury were 
instructed to provide for three hundred Italians. In 1245 the 



278 THE STEUGGLE FOR THE CHARTER [henbt m. 

new pope, Innocent IV,, demanded a year's revenue from all 
vacant livings, and in a formal protest, which the English bishops 
subsequently presented at the council of Lyons, they declared that 
they were putting 60,000 marks each year into the hands of 
foreign prelates. At last the exactions became so burdensome 
that even the laity complained of the impoverishment of the 
country. 

The only justification which can be advanced in defense of the 

policy of the popes, is the desperateness of the mighty struggle 

which they were carrying on against Frederick II. It 

Orowing hit- . •/ ^ ^ '^ 

terness toward was a duel of Titans and neither party was scrupulous 

about encroaching upon the rights of inferior powers. It 
was a cause too, Gregory or Innocent might justly claim, in which 
the entire church was interested, and their vassals of England ought 
to bear a share of the burdens as well as their vassals of Italy. To 
national England, however, drawing herself together after a cen- 
tury and a half of feudal strife, it seemed that she was paying 
overdear for her loyalty to the Eoman see, with her riches pour- 
ing into its coffers, her livings handed over to foreign ecclesiastics, 
many of whom did not take the trouble to come to England at all, 
and her king a witless tool in the hands of a foreign hierarchy. In 
the quaint words of Matthew of Paris, "the pope displayed the 
harshness of a stepfather, and the church of Rome the fury of a 
stepmother." Many voices were raised in protest. Even the 
saintly Edmund Rich, the archbishop of Canterbury, although 
like Langton he owed his appointment directly to the intrusion of 
papal authority, protested against the continued usurpations of 
the Roman pontiff and went into exile rather than submit. Sir 
Robert Twenge, a public-spirited knight of Yorkshire, went to 
Rome in order to present his protest in person. But no voice 
rang clearer than that of Robert Grosseteste, the bishop of Lin- 
coln, who boldly urged the clergy to resist the frequent levies, and 
declared that the nominees of the pope were drawing from Eng- 
land three times as much revenue as the king himself. Almost 
his last words were those of the noble and manly protest of 1253. 
Innocent had proposed that one of his own nephews be invested 
with aliving in the diocese of Lincoln. "I decline to obey," replied 



1353-1257] THE APULIAN AFFAIE 279 

Grosseteste; "filially and obediently, I oppose; I rebel!" Thus 
were sown in the English mind the first seeds of that bitterness 
which was destined two centuries later to bear fruit so fatal to 
the pope's interests in England. 

In 1257 affairs began to approach a crisis. Frederick II. had 
died in 1250, and Innocent IV. had followed him to the grave in 

1254. Innocent's successor was Alexander IV., a mild 
of'tJiecrls'S^^^ and gentle prince, of very different spirit from either 

Gregory or Innocent, The policy of the Roman see, 
however, had become too firmly established; the enmities which 
divided Italy had bitten too deeply into the hearts of the people 
to be influenced much by the character of one pope, so that 
Alexander was compelled by his position to take up the task of his 
predecessors. A Hohenstaufen prince must not be allowed to 
establish himself in southern Italy; a descendant of Frederick II. 
must not succeed to the crown of the Sicilies. Innocent had 
sought to interest France in his cause by offering the disputed 
crown to Charles of Anjou, the brother of Louis IX. ; he had also 
gone begging to England and had actually persuaded Henry, who 
was just vain enough to be caught by the dangerous bauble, to 
accept the honor for his second son Edmund, when Innocent died 
and left his bargaining and his scheming for Alexander to bring 
to some definite result. Henry had agreed to send an army to 
take possession of the Sicilian kingdom, and when he was unable 
to act, the pope had generously undertaken to carry on the war 
for him, charging the expense up to his account, and with such 
good results that very soon Henry's debt had been rolled up to 
135,000 marks. lu the meantime the pope had not hesitated to 
press Henry for payment, even sending his own creditors to Eng- 
land to deal directly with the sorely beset debtor. In 1257 the 
urgency of Alexander finally forced the king to lay the matter 
before the great council and ask for a grant of 140,000 marks. 
Henry tried to arouse some enthusiasm by presenting to the 
barons the little Edmund tricked out in the costume of Apulia, 
but the attempt was a dismal failure. The clergy consented to 
contribute 52,000 marks, but the barons remained ominously 
silent. 



380 THE STRUGGLE FOR THE CHARTER [henry HI, 

The king and the great council were approaching a deadlock, 
and a deadlock at this moment meant bankruptcy, possibly revo- 
lution. Since the fall of Hubert de Burgh the king 
of%mrxrs'^ had acted as his own chief minister. Since 1244 he 
government ^^^ Conducted the government without treasurer, 
chancellor, or justiciar. The alfairs of these important 
officers had been carried on by means of a bureau of clerks, mere 
registering machines, both irresponsible and inefficient. Public 
business had fallen first into arrears, and then into hopeless con- 
fusion. Enormous sums had been raised but the treasury was 
always bare. The king could not pay even the menials about 
his court, and some of them had been driven to highway rob- 
bery by actual destitution. To add to the general distress the 
year 1257 was attended by a failure of the crops throughout Eng- 
land. Heavy and long-continued rains ruined the grain, and when 
November came the harvests still lay rotting in the fields. The 
price of wheat rose tenfold, and in the winter which followed 
thousands of the people died of hunger. The rich had no con- 
fidence in the future, and the poor, always the first to suffer on the 
eve of national bankruptcy, were openly disloyal, restless, and 
defiant. The discontent was universal and soon passed into savage 
mutterings, the presage of coming storm. 

In the past, in the case of wise kings like the first two Henrys, 
it had been sufficient to protest and exact some written guarantee 

of better rule. But this method had proved utterly 
Futility of • i , . .. tt 

former metii- worthless against the obstinate extravagance of Henry 

odsofre- n , • • i , • i , i i 

straining the and the insatiable avarice of the creatures wno surrounded 
him. Never had charters been more elaborate or mi- 
nute ; never had king more readily and graciously given his word ; but 
never had king more lightly broken his word again as soon as his 
people's wealth was safely housed in the royal treasury. Yet the 
nation had hesitated to draw the sword. The memories of John's 
wars were still fresh. The clergy were overawed by the pope ; on 
the one hand, on the other, they distrusted the barons and hesi- 
tated to join them in a struggle against the royal authority. 
The commons as yet not only had no regular representation in 
the national council, but by long-accepted tradition they still 



1258] THE MAD PARLIAMENT 281 

regarded the king as their natural protector, and had no desire 
to throw the administration altogether into the hands of the 
barons. 

Such was the condition of affairs when in April 1258 the barons 
were summoned to a great council at London. They were still in 
the same ugly mood in which they had met the king in 
0^12%^^^ the preceding year. But the pope, who had little appre- 
ciation of the difficulties which confronted Henry, had 
continued to press him for the immediate settlement of his account; 
the legate had threatened the kingdom with the interdict in case 
of refusal, and the king had no recourse save to call once more 
upon the barons to assist him in making good his pledge. Then 
the barons who had been silent before spoke out; they told the 
king plainly that he had acted unwisely in the Sicilian affair 
and without the advice of the council, and that he must end 
the matter as best he could. After a month of wrangling 
Henry finally promised that he would summon the barons again 
at Oxford soon after Whitsuntide ; and that, if they would grant 
the aid for which he asked, he would consider their grievances 
and consent to the appointment of a commission of twenty- 
four, twelve of whom should be taken from the royal council and 
twelve from the barons, with full power to institute the necessary 
reforms. The barons accepted the promise in good faith and the 
assembly broke up. 

The king kept his word, and early in June the barons were 

summoned to meet him at Oxford. There was no mistaking the 

spirit of this second assembly, which was soon christened 

The "Mad 

Parliament," by the king's adherents the "Mad Parliament." ^ The 
June 1258. , -,-,.„,, T UT 1 j_i 

barons met clad m full armor, and although they pre- 
tended that the arming was for the Welsh wars, no one was ignorant 
of its real purpose. They first presented their grievances, a long 

' The name parliament was now coming into vogue. Matthew of 
Paris among English writers first uses it, parlamentum, of the meeting 
of the barons at London in 1246. Gneist, Const. Hist, of England, I, p. 
320, note 2a. The word at first had nothing of its later specific meaning, 
but was used in some such way as the word congress is frequently used 
to-day. See Taswell-Langmead, p. 194 and note 1. 



282 THE STRUGGLE FOR THE CHARTER [henbt 111. 

and formidable list/ and then proceeded to the reordering of the 
government. A justiciar, treasurer, and chancellor were chosen, 
presumably, by the parliament. The promised committee of 
twenty-four were also appointed, and proceeded to draw up the 
constitution known as the Provisions of Oxford. 

In accordance with the proposed constitution, the commission of 

twenty-four were to appoint a second committee of four; each 

twelve to select two names from the opposing twelve. 

sionsof The committee of four were then to select a per- 

Orford. . 

manent council of fifteen members. This council 
was to advise the king in matters of state and to exercise a 
direct supervision over his public acts. The barons were also 
to appoint a second permanent committee to consist of twelve 
members who were to represent the "community of the realm," 
meeting in parliament with the council of fifteen three times a 
year. A second committee of twenty-four were to be empowered 
to negotiate the aid which had been promised to the king. The 
original twenty-four were entrusted with the reform of the church. 
In each shire four discreet knights were to be appointed to watch 
the conduct of the sheriffs and report at the parliaments. The 
sheriffs were to be appointed for one year and their accounts 
were to be strictly audited. A direct blow was aimed at the foreign 
friends of the king, in that all castles were to be put at once into 
the hands of native Englishmen. 

The barons were taking a long step in advance of the crude 
provisions made in the Great Charter for safe-guarding the nation 
, . against the tyrannies of the king ; yet they had little 

t.yiiini sifiiiifi- comprehension of the principles of constitutional gov- 
PniriKinns. ernmcnt. For the arbitrary government of an irre- 
sponsible king, they had nothing better to substitute than the 
arbitrary government of an irresponsible oligarchy. In the 
method also, which they devised for selecting the men to whom this 
important trust was to be committed, they betray the same 
barrenness of expedient, having exhausted their ingenuity in 

'See Stubbs, S. C, p. 383. By comparing these grievances point by 
point with the provisions of the Great Charter it will be seen how little 
had yet been actually secured. 



1258] THE PROVISIONS OF OXFORD 283 

imitating the complicated and crude machinery of cross appoint- 
ments by which it was customary to negotiate the treaties 
of the era. The barons conceded the supervision of local 
administration to the knights of the shire and allowed them to 
report at the parliaments. Yet they evidently liad no wish to allow 
the knights any standing as a constituent part of the parliament, 
and really showed less confidence in this large and important ele- 
ment of the commonalty of the realm than Henry him- 
nr,4. self had shown on a previous occasion/ when he had 

assembled the knights through their representatives, as 
an integral part of the great council. All in all, the Provisions 
were constitutionally a step backward; they were designed to 
fetter the king by putting the government into the hands of an 
oligarchy of the great barons, rather than to extend political priv- 
ileges to the community at large or to develop its political activity. 
As it was, the lesser barons evidently were not satisfied, and to 
quiet them, the twenty-four promised to announce further reforms 
before the following Christmas. 

The Provisions were accepted by the king ; the several commit- 
tees were appointed and the members bound by an elaborate series 
of oaths to j)erform their respective duties. The king 
gmernment ^^^^ swore to Support the Provisions and respect the 
'^(}uncneci, advice of the council. A flurry was caused for a moment 
by the conduct of Henry's half-brothers, the Lusignans, 
who refused to surrender their castles at the demand of the barons, 
and, throwing themselves into the castle of Winchester, defied the 
authority of the government. After a two weeks' siege, however, 
they were compelled to capitulate on July 5, and were expelled 
from the kingdom, leaving the most of their ill-gotten wealth 
behind them. After their departure, Edward, Henry's eldest son, 
also accepted the Provisions, and the new government was fairly 
launched. On the 18th of October, in a document drawn up in 
English, French, and Latin, the king formally announced to the 
world his acceptance of the Provisions and his purpose to respect 
the decisions of the council. 

^ Taswell-Langmead, p. 194. 



284 THE STRUGGLE FOR THE CHARTER [hknryUI. 

The two men who thus far had led the barons were Eichard of 
Clare, Earl of Gloucester, and Simon de Montfort, Earl of Lei- 
cester. Of these two men Eichard of Clare was "by 
Leaders of birth, property, and descent the natural head of the 

the harons. ' i _ ^ -^ ' 

English baronage." He was also a man of great energy 
and strength, but his political sympathies were narrow and con- 
fined him to the interests of his class. A very different man was 
Earl Simon. He came from an ancient Norman family and was 
the second son of that Simon de Montfort who had lost his life 
under the walls of Toulouse in the Albigensian Crusade. The 
younger Simon like his father was tall and handsome; he pos- 
sessed also his religious ardor, his love of roving, his fondness for 
war and adventure. From his father's mother he had inherited a 
claim to the English earldom of Leicester, the recognition of which 
by Henry had given him a standing among the English barons. 
He had risen rapidly in favor, and in 1238 had secretly married 
the king's sister Eleanor, the widow of William Marshal the 
younger. Thus far the career of Simon had not differed much 
from that of many another foreign adventurer who came to seek 
his fortune in England. His rapid rise, also, had stirred up bitter 
enemies, chief of whom was the king, who was j)articularly dis- 
pleased by the marriage with Eleanor. In 1240 Simon departed 
on a Crusade and was gone two years. In 1248 he was made gov- 
ernor of Gascony and gave its unruly nobles the best administra- 
tion that they had known since the days of Eichard I. He 
returned in 1251 to find that the king's hostility had not abated 
and that the malice of his own enemies was as busy as ever. Yet 
his services were too valuable to be dispensed with, and he was 
sent again to Gascony as the guardian of Prince Edward. Simon's 
high reputation at this time is shown by the fact that he was twice 
invited to be seneschal of France. In 1254, however, he was finally 
retired to remain for two years under the deep shadow of royal 
displeasure. In 1256 he came back to England to throw himself 
into the cause of reform, and it was largely due to his clear-sighted 
leadership that such definite results had been wrought out of the 
parliaments of London and Oxford. He was not, like Langton, an 
Englishman; but yet, like Langton, like no Englishman of his own 



1259] DIVISION IN THE PAKTY OF THE BAKONS 285 

times, he rose to the full significance of the movement for the 
political reorganization of the kingdom. 

The year 1259 opened auspiciously enough for the new admin- 
istration. After the expulsion of the foreigners the adherents of 

the king were left in a hopeless minority both in the 
The split in council of fifteen and in the consulting board of twelve. 
the barons. Henry's personal influence was feeble. His son Edward 

had a strong following among the lesser barons, but 
they were all with Simon and the cause of reform. Eichard of 
Cornwall, the king's brother, who had been elected King of the 
Komans in 1257 and had been spending the last two years in the 
mad quest for imperial honors, returned in January of 1259, but 
was compelled to swear to support the Provisions. In times past, 
at great crises in the nation's history, the archbishop of Canter- 
bury had generally played a most important role and the support 
of his powerful influence was more to be desired than the support 
of an army. The present incumbent, however, was Boniface of 
Savoy, the queen's uncle, who was not only one of the very foreigners 
whom the barons were determined to keep out of the kingdom, but 
had made himself specially obnoxious by his brutal violence, so 
marked in contrast with the gentle saintliness of his predecessor. 
There was no one, therefore, to rally a king's party. Yet the king 
was not long without friends. He found them, moreover, where 
he had least expected, among the very barons who had driven away 
his kinsmen and seized control of his government. Gloucester and 
Leicester were thoroughly incompatible both in views and in tem- 
perament. Gloucester was satisfied, now that the foreigners had 
been expelled, and had no desire to see the reform carried farther. 
Leicester, apparently, did not wish to stop until remedies had been 
introduced which should make such abuses of power as had disgraced 
the reigns of John and Henry henceforth impossible. Gloucester 
furthermore had no sympathy with the demands of the inferior 
barons, and it was probably due to him and the conservative instincts 
of the powerful section of the baronage which he represented, that 
the Provisions were so illiberal and that the inferior barons had 
been put off with a promise. Simon, however, was evidently not 
satisfied with simply exalting the powers of a few great barons at 



286 THE STEUGGLE FOE THE CHAETEE [henry ill. 

the expense of the crown; he contended not for the privileges 
of his class but to secure good government for the nation. 

Christmas came and passed, and the council had taken no steps 
to fulfill the promises made at Oxford. In February the matter 
Th p en- came to an open quarrel between Gloucester and Simon; 
siqnsofWest- jj^^t Simou apparently won, for on the 28th of March 

minister'. Oct- ^^ -^ ' 

ober, mx ^he king published an ordinance by which the barons of 
the parliament undertook "to observe towards their dependents all 
the engagements which the king had undertaken to observe 
tov/ards his vassals," This pledge, however, was evidently not 
definite enough to satisfy the great body of knights, ^ who, led by 
Prince Edward himself, demanded of the council that the specific 
reforms promised at Oxford be forthcoming. There were ominous 
threats of counter-revolution in the air, and the oligarchy in con- 
trol of the government could only submit. In October, therefore, 
they published a second or supplementary set of Provisions, known 
as the Provisions of Westminster., which, while not altogether 
satisfactory, served to allay the disquiet for a time. 

It is not necessary to trace the further history of the govern- 
ment of the barons in detail. They succeeded in bringing to a 

close a Welsh war which had smouldered through the 
mentof the greater part of Henry's personal reign. They withdrew 

England from all share in the unfortunate Sicilian affair. 
They also succeeded in settling by a definite treaty the long-stand- 
ing quarrel of England and France over the lost x^ngevin dominions, 

in which the council renounced all claims of the English 
Tlie treatii of 
Bordeaux, kingupou Normandy, Anion, Touraine, and Poitou ; the~ 

1259, o ± .. fj 

French king conceded Bordeaux, Bayonne, and Gascony, 
with the bishoprics of Limoges, Cahors, and Perigord, all to be held 
by the king of England as fiefs of the king of France. The domes- 
tic administration of the council seems to have been likewise suc- 
cessful. The three parliaments were held each year; the four 
knights from each county regularly reported on the conduct of 
the sheriffs, and the courts instead of being a source of extortion, 
became again the guardians of law-abiding subjects. 

So matters continued until the close of 1260. Leicester and 

^ "The commuuity of the bachelors of England,"' Stubbs.C. H., II, p. 83. 



1260-1262] HENRY DEFIES THE COUNCIL 287 

Gloucester were apparently reconciled; but the estrangement of 
Leicester and the great barons was not healed, although Simon had 

spent much of his time abroad since the quarrel 
wmthJ'"'^' of 1359. Gloucester and the king naturally drew 
^l^uncii, YiQ&r together, and Edward and Simon, who had 

long been close friends, as naturally found themselves 
in accord. Edward, moreover, had been specially embittered 
against Gloucester who it seems had been largely responsible 
for the Treaty of Bordeaux, having surrendered the English 
claim to IS^rmandy against the express protest of the prince. 
Gloucester also had used the intimacy of Edward and Simon 
to excite the suspicion of the king and caused him to believe 
that Simon was plotting to dethrone him in the interests of 
his son. Henry on his part was fully aware of the unpopu- 
larity of Simon with the great barons and had taken advantage of 
his continued absence to foment trouble in the council and had 
gathered about him a considerable party. At the opening of 1261 
he believed that he was strong enough to act, and made no secret of 
his determination to overthrow the Provisions of Oxford. He also 
received direct encouragement from the pope, who annulled the 
Provisions and released Henry and Edward from their oaths. 
Edward, whose sympathies were still with the popular cause, 
refused the pope's proffered assistance; but Henry seized and 
fortified London Tower, brought over foreign soldiers and began 
again to appoint his ministers and sheriffs quite in the old way. 
Open war would have broken out immediately but neither side was 
yet sure of its strength. The great barons, moreover, had become 
altogether lukewarm in their support of the Provisions, and prob- 
ably would not have opposed the king at all, if he had shown any 
disposition to keep his foreign friends out of the country, for they 
had already scented fresh booty and were beginning to return. 
The liberal views of Simon also were steadily gaining ground in the 
towns and in the counties, and the jDeople were showing their dis- 
approval of the king's course by open rioting in the north and 
west. In 1262 the earl of Gloucester died, and Simon returned to 
put himself again at the head of the popular movement. He was 
joined by the sou of Gloucester, the young Earl Gilbert. 



288 THE STRUGGLE FOR THE CHARTER [henry III. 

As the year 1263 opened, it was evident that the country was 
drifting rapidly into civil war. The party of the barons was at last 

hopelessly divided. The great earls had come to 
of civil war, look upon the Provisions as a shallow pretense to hide 

de Montfort's despotism. Edward also had for some 
time begun to mistrust, if not the motives, at least the wisdom of 
the leader of the popular party, and when the young earl of 
Gloucester refused to swear allegiance to him as heir to the 
throne, he regarded it as cause of open breach with his party, 
Simon, moreover, had made an alliance with Edward's old enemy 
of Wales, Llewelyn, who had begun to attack the king's partisans 
in the west. The people of London had unfortunately also won 
the enmity of Edward by an utterly inexcusable insult to his 
mother whom they hated as one of the detested foreigners. 
Eichard of Cornwall, who had not yet committed himself to either 
party, for the moment managed to stave off the war by persuading 
the leaders to lay their quarrel before Louis of France for arbitra- 
tion. Louis, however, knew little of the conditions which existed 
Thc'Miscof ^^^ England, and his decision, the Mise of Amiens, was 
Amiens," singularly uniust and one-sided. He declared that the 
1264. Provisions of Oxford and all engagements connected 

with them were null and void; that Henry might appoint his own 
council and employ foreigners if he would, but that previous 
charters ought to be observed. 

The discontented leaders were by no means satisfied with the 
results of the attempt at arbitration. They declared that they 

might accept the decision against the Provisions of 
the'^Miseof Oxford, but that the foreigners must be expelled from 

the kingdom; this item they had not consented to 
arbitrate. The city of London was the first to repudiate the ver- 
dict. Simon also announced that he proposed to adhere to the 
Provisions of Oxford. Only a few of the great barons went with 
him, but the citizens of the large towns, the native clergy, the 
universities, and the great body of the people hailed his declaration 
with unfeigned enthusiasm. 

The rejection of the Mise of Amiens was the signal for the begin- 
ning of the so called "Barons' War." At first the royal forces won 



1264] THE barons' war 289 

marked success in the midland counties; Northampton was taken; 

Nottingham opened her gates, and Tutbury surrendered. Then 

the war drifted south, and finally in the first week of 

the ''Barons' May, 1264, the two armies faced each other at Lewes. 

IVcir " 1264. 

The bishops of London and Worcester came to the king 
with an offer of 50,000 marks if he would confirm the Provisions of 
Oxford. His answer was a defiance, and a challenge to do their worst. 
The next morning Earl Simon, reinforced by a body of Londoners, 
led his army to the attack. Simon, good Norman that he was, had 

spent the night in prayer, urging others to do the same, 
u^m4 ^^"^ ^^^^ ^^^^ spirit had found a ready response among soldiers 

who felt that, like the men of 1215, they too had a right 
to call themselves "The Army of God and the Holy Church." The 
battle went against the king, owing largely to the eagerness of 
Edward who early in the action had routed a band of Londoners 
and led his men-at-arms too far in the pursuit. He returned to 
the field to find the battle lost, and Henry and Eichard of Corn- 
wall prisoners. 

The victory placed the game in Earl Simon's hands; and the 
next day, a formal treaty, the Mise of Letoes, was signed in which 

the king bound himself to submit the points at issue to 
^mvef ^ ^®^ board of arbitration ; to act solely on the advice 

of his counsellors "in administering justice and choos- 
ing ministers;" to observe the charters and to live at moderate 
expense; that Edward and Henry, the son of Richard of Corn- 
wall, be given as hostages, and that the earls of Leicester and 
Gloucester be indemnified for their sacrifices in the war. 

Simon himself was now apparently ready to abandon the cum- 
bersome arrangement devised at Oxford; and a month later, June 

22, a great council or parliament, to which were added 
tionofml"'' ■^^^^* knights from each shire, was summoned to ratify 

a new scheme of government. By this plan three elec- 
tors were to be chosen by the parliament, and these in turn were 
to name a permanent body of nine councillors. Of the nine three 
were to be in constant attendance, and only by their advice could 
the king act. They were to nominate the ministers of the crown 
and the wardens of the castles, and their authority was to continue 



390 THE STEUGGLE FOR THE CHARTER [hbnrt ill. 

until the new board of arbitration provided by the Mise of Lewes 
had settled the points at issue. ^ The plan was adopted and Simon 
was named as one of the three electors ; with him were associated 
the earl of Gloucester and Stephen Berksted, the bishop of 
Chichester. These three men for the next year were the real gov- 
ernors of England. 

Simon was fully aware of the insecurity of his position, and 

had little confidence in the proposed arbitration. He seized the 

royal castles, therefore, and placed them in the hands of 

Condition of tt i i x j. xi, x i 

parties after his own men. He also sought to secure the country by 
appointing in each shire so called "guardians of the 
peace. " The royal partisans on the Welsh border, led by the border 
lord, Koger Mortimer, were still strong and defiant and were pre- 
paring for the renewal of war; Queen Eleanor and the English 
refugees were also raising a powerful force in France. The pope 
too had entered the lists and was, using all his influence to detach 
the bishops from the support of Simon, and the legate stood ready 
to hurl his anathemas at the new government. 

Simon, nevertheless, bravely addressed himself to the task of 
inaugurating the new order, and on the 20th of January 12G5 his 
famous parliament came together at London. Of tlie 
^^^'^ Fo/m-'- S^'^^^ barons of the kingdom only five earls, including 
Simon and Gloucester, and eighteen barons had been 
summoned. The clergy, however, were generally represented. 
The shires also had been instructed through the sheriffs to elect 
in each shire court "four legal and discreet knights to attend the 
king in parliament at London." As an afterthought, apparently, 
a similar summons had also been sent to such cities and towns 
individually as were known to be friendly to Simon, urging the 
attendance of two deputies from each. As a matter of fact, the 
list included all the most important cities of England. The parlia- 
ment as thus composed sat until late in March. It had been sum- 
moned to complete the arrangements entered into at Lewes. The 
king swore to maintain the new form of government during his 
lifetime, and published "a statement of the circumstances and 
terms of pacification. " Those who had lately borne arms against 

i^bbs, S. C, 414. 



1365] simok's parliament 291 

the king took the oath of fealty. Edward's county of Chester 
because of its military importance was transferred to Simon, for 
which Edward was to receive other lands in compensation. The 
charters were also confirmed and declared once more established. 
Then the parliament broke up. In a few months its acts were 
swept away in the counter revokition which culminated at Eves- 
ham, but a new suggestion, a hint at least, had been given that the 
iintitled inhabitants of the towns might be useful in the national 
council. It is upon this hint, for j^recedent it can hardly be 
called, that the fame of this assembly of Simon rests. Eepresent- 
atives from the shires had been summoned several times during 
the ten years preceding; but no one had yet thought of inviting 
representatives from the great towns to take part in the actual 
deliberations of the national council. It is not clear that even 
Simon appreciated fully the significance of the innovation. The 
increasing wealth of the towns formed no inconsiderable basis of 
the national revenue, and it was in every way important to secure 
their active sympathy and support in order to counteract the 
hostility of the great barons. In all probability this was Simon's 
sole motive in inviting the burghers to sit with barons and bishops 
and knights to deliberate upon the affairs of the kingdom. But, 
however that may be, although no one now calls this assembly of 
1265 the first meeting of the House of Commons, it is nevertheless 
"a very notable date" ; it is the first hint of the important part yet 
to be performed by the people in the government of England. 

Simon was now to pay the penalty of the successful revolution- 
ist. He had been in fact too successful, for if his success had not 
turned his own head, it had turned the heads of his 
andthefaii two SOUS. Their insolence angered Gloucester; a per- 

Of SwWlh . . 

Augniit4, sonal quarrel with Earl Simon followed, in which Clou- 

1265. . 

cester intimated that Earl Simon himself was one of the 
hated foreigners who had been forbidden by the Provisions of Oxford 
to share in the government of England, and when on the 28th of 
May, Edward, who since the meeting of parliament, had been 
retained in a sort of honorable captivity at Hereford, rode away to 
join Mortimer on the Welsh border, Gloucester threw off all further 
pretense of acting with Simon and gathered his tenants for war. 



292 THE STRUGGLE FOR THE CHARTER [henky IIL 

The moment was well chosen. Earl Simon had taken the king 
and marched into Wales where the king's half-brother, William of 
Valence, was seeking to rally a party among his tenants of Pem- 
broke. Edward and the earl of Gloucester, therefore, by seizing 
the town of Gloucester, easily secured control of the Severn and 
cut off Earl Simon from England. The younger Simon, who was 
at the time besieging Pevensey, hearing of his father's danger 
advanced to Kenilworth. The father meanwhile was hastily 
returning towards Hereford, his army suffering greatly from 
the privations of the long march through the Welsh hills. His 
hope was to combine his force with that of his son, and by sur- 
rounding Edward force him to fight at a disadvantage. Edward, 
however, was fully awake to his danger and, by a forced march, 
struck the younger Simon at Kenilworth and drove him with 
heavy loss behind its massive walls. But the elder Simon was 
fully as alert as Edward, and taking advantage of his departure 
from the Severn, on the 2d of August threw his troops across the 
river, and, by a long night march, on the morning of the 4th 
reached Evesham where he had planned to join his son. 
Edward in the meanwhile had already countermarched and 
was again approaching the Severn, but had evidently failed 
to meet the elder Simon. The younger Simon once more leaving 
Kenilworth was also hurrying forward by forced marches, not 
to overtake Edward but to keep his appointment with his father. 
The two Montforts were now hardly ten miles apart and the 
junction of their armies seemed certain. The weary toil of the 
night, however, had told sadly on their troops and in a fatal 
moment the younger Simon gave orders for his men to halt at 
Alcester and prepare the morning meal. This halt proved the 
ruin of Simon, for Edward "through the same memorable night 
was hurrying from the Severn by country cross-lanes, to seize the 
fatal gap that lay between" father and son. Through the morn- 
ing mists Simon saw the troops of Edward advancing, the men 
marching in long and regular ranks. He read his fate at 
once; his handful of knights, supported only by an unorganized 
mob of Welsh peasantry, could never stand before the disciplined 
troops which were moving down upon them. "Let us commend 



1265] 



DEATH OF SIMON 



293 



our souls to God," he cried to the brave men who stood by his side, 
"for our bodies are the foe's." The Welsh gave way at the first 
shock. The group of knights about the earl, among whom was 
Hugh le Despenser the Justiciar, fought till the last man was down. 
Still Simon, like Totila of old, held off his swarming foes, until a 
foul blow dealt from behind felled him to the earth, and with the 
cry, "It is God's grace," the old hero yielded up his spirit.^ 



PROMINENT CONTEMPORARIES OF THE ERA OF THE CHARTER. 

KINGS OF ENGLAND: 

Richard I. 1189-1199. John, 1199-1216. Henry III.,1210-1272. 



KINGS OF FRANCE 

Philip 11., Augustus, d. 

1223. 
Louis VIII., d. 1326. 
Louis IX., d. 1370. 
Philip III. 



EMPERORS 

Fredericli I., Barbarossa, 

d. 1190 
Henry VI., d. 1198. 
Philip, d. 1209. 
Otto IV., 1209-1218. 
Frederick II., 1213-12.50. 



KINGS OF SCOTS 

William the Liou, d. 1314. 
Alexander II., d. 1249. 
Alexander III. 



Clement III., d. 1191. 
Innocent III., d. 1316. 
Honorius III., d. 1337. 
Gregory IX., d. 1341. 
Innocent IV., 1354. 
AlexanderlV., d. 1261 



ARCHBISHOPS OF 
CANTERBURY 

Baldwin, 118.5-1190. 
Hubert Walter, 1193-1305. 
Stephen Langton, 1307- 

1328. 
Edmund Rich, 1234-1240. 
Boniface of Savoy, 1345- 

1370. 



CHIEF JUSTICIARS OF 
ENGLAND 

Hugh Of Puiset, 1189-1190. 
William Longchamp, 1190- 

1191. 
Walter of Coutances, 1191- 

1194. 
Hubert Walter, 1194-1198. 
Geoffrey Fitz- Peter, 1199- 

1214. 
Peter des Roches, 1314- 

1215. 
Hubert de Burgh, 1315- 

1232. 

(The last of the great 
justiciars.) 



See Green's brilliant account of the battle. H. E. P., I, pp. 303 and 



304. 



CHAPTER IX 



THE CHARTER CONFIRMED 



BENBY in., 1265-1272 
EDWARD I., 1272-1297 



Lewes was now nudone; all that had been gained by two gen- 
erations of strife apparently had been swept away; the king could, 
now defy the Charter, squander the treasure of his sub- 
ofEveHham J^^ts, and rule as he listed. This, to all appearance, 
was Henry's interpretation of the overthrow of Simon, 
and he at once set about punishing those who had recently opposed 
him. Simon's vast estates were given to the king's second son, 
Edmund; the towns which had favored Simon, London most con- 
spicuously, were held to be at. the king's mercy and their privileges 
forfeited; the estates of the barons also who had followed Simon, 
nearly one-half the gentry of England, were marked for forfeiture 
and confiscation; and the hungry favorites of the king, without 
waiting for process of law, began at once to take possession. In 
September a parliament, brought together at Winchester in 
the king's interests, legalized these spoliations by revoking all 
charters which had been granted during the king's captivity 
and by authorizing the confiscations in one gigantic act of 
forfeiture. 

It was impossible, however, for the king's party to pursue this 
mad career of reactionary vengeance long without a challenge. 
The movement for popular rights had stirred the people 
gathering too profoundly to be abandoned after one reverse. The 
friars, who from the first had espoused the people's 
cause, cherished the memory of the fallen Simon, ' 'who gave up 
not only his property, but also his person, to defend the poor 
from oppression;" nor was it long before miracles were reported 
at his grave, — a throb from the great heart of the people, a surge 

294 



1266, 1267] DICTUM OF KENILWORTH 295 

from tlie lower deep. Then mourning over the disaster of Eves- 
ham gave way to acts of popular violence, as at St. Albans, where a 
king's officer and his posse were cut to pieces by the townspeople 
and their heads set up at the "four corners of the borough." 
The powerful garrison of Kenilworth also continued to defy the 
authority of the king, levying its contributions upon all the sur- 
rounding country, while the younger Simon retired into the fast- 
nesses of the Fen Country on the lower Trent, and there rallied to 
his side the "disinherited," as the victims of the recent forfeit- 
ures styled themselves. The sturdy burghers of the Cinque 
Ports put their wives and children on board their ships, and 
taking to the Channel, began to harry the southern coasts. 
Llewelyn, the old ally of Simon, crossed the borders and began 
to ravage Chester. Bands of outlaws also terrorized the counties 
far and near. 

The outlook, therefore, was not reassuring. Such leaders as 
Edward and Gloucester who had once been of the popular party 
Dictum of ^^^^ ^^ their hearts still sympathized with some of the 
October 31^' aims of Simon, were convinced that the kingdom could 
1266. \)Q saved only by conciliation ; the sweeping decree of 

disinheritance must be recalled, or at least so modified that those 
who submitted might have the opportunity of redeeming their 
lands by the payment of a fine; the king also must restore the 
Charters as a guarantee of good government to the people. These 
measures were forced upon Henry at a parliament summoned the 
following summer under the walls of Kenilworth, and were pub- 
lished, October 31, 126G, in the famous Dictum of Kenihvorth. 
In November Kenilworth capitulated. It was not, however, until 
the next year, when the earl of Gloucester suddenly 
appeared in London and took possession of the city as a 
pledge for the fulfillment of the king's promises, that the obtuse 
mind of Henry fully realized that it was no longer possible to con- 
tinue the old methods and that the new order was final. In Novem- 
ber a parliament met at Marlborough and proceeded to put the 
finishing touches to what was virtually a revolution by formally 
adopting the Provisions of Westminster of 1259, although the 
appointment of all officers of state was carefully reserved for the 



296 THE CHAETER COISTFIRMED [edward I. 

crown. Thus the great cause for which Simon had laid down his 
life after all was not lost. The Charters were saved, and the 
principles for which Simon had fought were again recognized as a 
part of the fundamental law of England. 

Quiet was now so completely restored that Edward, to whose 

wisdom and firmness this happy outcome was largely due, thought 

it safe to leave the kingdom and loin with Louis IX. of 

Crusad£; France in the ill-fated Seventh and last of the Crusades, 

1270-1274. 

He left England in 1270; reached Tunis just after the 
death of Louis; then went to Acre where he stayed some months 
but accomplished nothing of importance. In 1272 he set out upon 
his return and in Sicily heard of his father's death. 

The last years of the old king had been uneventful and tranquil. 
His advancing age had fortunately prevented him from again 
Death of attempting any active part in the administration of the 
Novemler" government. He had been a good man, but a bad king 
16, 1272. and a dangerous tyrant. His worst weaknesses were an 

overfaithfulness to unworthy friends who did not hesitate to sac- 
rifice him to their own interests, an overfondness for the members 
of his family, and a blind devotion to the religious forms and 
authorities of his day. "Whatever be his sins," said the Just 
Louis, "his prayers and offerings will save his soul." His mis- 
rule was due, not like John's to malicious pleasure in playing the 
tyrant, but to a witless vanity which plunged him into extrava- 
gance, stopped his ears to wiser counsels, and made him obsti- . 
nate when he should have been yielding, and yielding when 
he should have been firm, — -not an unusual combination in men 
of his type. 

Four days after the death of Henry the barons of England took 

the oath of fealty to Edward, and although he did not return for 

his coronation until 1274, his reign was regarded by the 
The oath of , ... .,,■,„ i , . i ■, 

fealty to lawyers as beginning with the date of the taking of the 

Novemiier oath and not with his coronation. Here was something 

20 1272. 

new in the annals of English kings. It was not simply 
that a king was acknowledged without dispute or rival, or that the 
oath of fealty had come to take the place of formal election by the 
great council, but that the hereditary right of the son to the sue- 



CHARACTER OF EDWARD " 297 

cession was for the first time clearly recognized. The recognition, 
however, v>^as not yet complete; Edward's reign did not begin until 
the barons had taken the oath of fealty. It will take two hundred 
years to bridge this gap. 

At the time of Henry's death Edward was thirty-three years 
old. He was already a veteran in war and in administration. 

He had profited much by the mistakes of his father; nor 
EdZardT^'^ had he been altogether void of sympathy with the visions 

of Earl Simon. Yet he possessed what Simon had not, 
a practical, common sense way of adapting his plans to facts as he 
found them. His ambition was to restore the crown to its ancient 
strength and dignity; yet he saw that he could not do this with- 
out the cordial support of a united people. Here in a word is the 
policy of Edward's reign. He was not enamored of the idea of 
encouraging the political activity of the people; but he saw that cer- 
tain privileges could no longer be withheld. He, therefore, accepted 
the inevitable; recognized what he could not deny, granted what 
he could not refuse, and used the returning confidence of the nation 
to secure anew the foundations of his throne. Personally he was 
well fitted to arouse the loyal enthusiasm of his people. His 
English name, his yellow hair, which even after it had whitened 
with advancing years still waved in luxuriant masses to his 
shoulders, the frank and sympathetic blue eyes, his frame, vig- 
orous, muscular, and tall, so that like Saul of old he towered head 
and shoulders above the young men who attended him, all associ- 
ated the new king with the best traditions of the English kingship, 
attracted the eye and drew out the love of his people. A warm- 
hearted Englishman he was, without any of the cold selfishness or 
crafty cunning of the Angevins, capable of deep affection, and 
withal possessing a high sense of honor. He could follow the 
bier of Earl Simon, his old companion in arms, as a sincere 
mourner ; he could weep over the death of his father, although it 
gave him a crown. He was slow to make promises and obstinate 
in yielding concessions, but an oath once given was to him a sacred 
thing. His temper was violent, and when aroused he could be fierce, 
cruel, and relentless. In the Song of Lewes he is "a lion in pride 
and fierceness;" "a panther in inconstancy and changeableness." 



298 THE CHARTER CONFIRMED [edward I. 

And yet Edward learned to govern himself, as he learned to govern 
his peojDle. 

The first serions difScnlty which faced Edward after his coro- 
nation was the long-standing quarrel of the Welsh with England. 

For England in the thirteenth century had a Welsh 
Relatinng of . x • i 

Wales tn question on her hands, as she has an Irish question 

to-day; and her efforts at settling the one then, had 
been as unsatisfactory as are tier efforts at settling the other now. 
The Welsh princes had made a formal submission to William the 
Conqueror, but they had never been brought under the actual rule 
of English kings. William's successors had from time to time 
invaded the country in order to enforce the obligations of the 
Welsh lords, but they had never met with more than temporary 
success. Secure in their mountain fastnesses, the Welsh chieftains 
had continued to raid English territory as pique or lust for plunder 
dictated; and English kings in order to protect the western shires 
had been compelled to establish on the border a number of military 
lords with almost sovereign |)owers. These were the so-called 
marcher barons, whose turbulent independence became in time as 
great a terror to the border lands as the chronic hostility of the 
Welsh. 

These unsatisfactory conditions had been sjiecially emphasized 
during the recent struggles, in which the Welsh lords had proved 

themselves ever ready to encourage and assist rebellion 
Edwardrc- jj^ England. When, therefore, at Edward's coronation 

duces Waleti. ° ' ' 

Llewelyn, Earl Simon's former ally, not only refused to 
apjDcar among Edward's vassals and renew homage, but openly 
defied the new king, Edward determined to settle the vexing Welsh 
question once and for all time. He first invaded Wales with an 
army strong enough to bring Llewelyn to terms, and forced him to 
cede the northern cantreds. He then proceeded to introduce into 
the ceded district the English system of shire administration and 
to enforce English laws. The Welsh naturally murmured at this 
interference with their local institutions, but probably would 
have accepted the new order without serious protest, had not 
the English magistrates made the common mistake of treating the 
less civilized people with severity and their prejudices with con- 



1282-1301] STATUTE OF WALES 299 

tempt. In 1282 the smouldering discontent broke out in a general 
popular rising. But Edward returned to the struggle more deter- 
mined than ever. Llewelyn was slain in a skirmish ; his brother 
David held out for a year, when he too was captured, and in a 
parliament held at Shrewsbury was condemned to a traitor's 
death. 

Edward then took possession of the conquered country as a 
forfeited fief, and the work of introducing English institutions 

began anew. By the Statute of Wales the principality 
statute of ^as placed directly under tlie dominion of the crown 

and divided into shires after the English model. Ed- 
ward, however, profiting by his former experience, was more careful 
to conciliate the feelings of the natives and chose Welshmen rather 
than Englishmen for the administration of the shires. The per- 
manence of the conquest was further assured by settling colonies 
of Englishmen in the towns and by building castles, such as Con- 
way and Carnarvon, the ruins of which still remain, silent testi- 
monies to the thoroughness of Edward's work. It was Edward's 
policy, also, to retain the country as a principality, distinct 
from England ; nor was it incorporated in the kingdom or allowed 
to send representatives regularly to the national parliaments until 
the reign of Henry VIII. In 1301 Edward gave the title of Prince 
of Wales to his eldest living son Edward, who had been born at 
Carnarvon in 1284. 

The subjection of the rude courts of Wales to the English sys- 
tem was only a part of a greater work which Edward had early set 

himself to accomplish. The thirteenth century was for 
The legal Europe distinctively a legal age. The great law schools 

of Bologna and other Italian cities had for a' century 
been preparing the way for a legal renaissance by creating and 
extending an interest in the systematic and scientific study of the 
Roman Law. Under emperors like Frederick Barbarossa and his 
brilliant grandson, these studies had borne practical fruit in the 
introduction of more rational methods of procedure in the imperial 
courts, and in the production of formal codes which supplanted the 
crude laws of feudal custom that had prevailed heretofore north 
of the Alps. This work had been continued in the west by such 



300 THE CHARTER CONFIRMED [edward 1. 

princes as Louis the Just of France aud Alfonso the Wise of 
Castile. In England the more perfect organization of the govern- 
ment, the development of the magistratical functions of the crown, 
and the coordination of the courts had not been without a direct 
influence in unifying the laws and reducing them to some coherent 
system, and the English people could already boast of their great 
legists, men like Glanville and Bracton,^ who wrote law treatises 
and sought to reach the underlying principles which explained and 
justified the decisions of the courts. But while the legal renais- 
sance in England had thus drawn its inspiration in the first instance 
from sources largely outside of the civil law, it was impossible for 
the English jurists, clerks as they were, many of them educated 
abroad, and all more or less steeped in the principles of the canon 
law, to escape the subtle influence of Rome; for although they did 
not follow the subject matter of the Roman law, they could not 
escape the charm of its orderly methods. 

Edward was in full sympathy with the legal renaissance of his 

age. He had had an Italian jurist for a tutor in his youth, and 

was very early made to feel the constant contradiction 

Edwarciand between the relations expressed in feudal forms and 

English law. ■■■ _ 

customs, and the theories which the legists taught him 
lay at the basis of these relations. To this work, therefore, of unify- 
ing and systematizing the irregular growths of centuries of feudal 
custom Edward addressed himself, and with such energy aud far- 
sighted wisdom as to win for himself the title of "the English 
Justinian," He broke with the precedents of the past and assumed 
the right of the crown not simply to amend laws of custom, but to 
create new laws ; not simply to make laws on the basis of what had 
been, but on the basis of what ought to be. That is, the laws of 
Edward, unlike the laws of his predecessors, are not merely amend- 
ments or restatements of existing customs but are laws in the 
modern sense. From his reign "the Statutes of the Realm" con- 
tinue in unbroken series. 

Of the statutes of Edward some are worthy of special notice, as 
way-marks in the social progress of England. Among these was 

' For work of Bracton, see Pollock and Maitland, History of English 
Law; The Age of Bracton, I, pp. 174-225. 



1376-1290] LAWS OF EDWARD 301 

the famous Statute de Eeligiosis, issued in 1279, which prohibited 
gifts of land to the church in mortmain, a form by which tenants 
had been accustomed to transfer their lands to some religious cor- 
poration and thus deprive the overlord of his rights. 
DeReiiQiosis. The law was designed not to check the growing power of 
the church as much as to j)rotect the overlord from the 
excessive piety of his tenants, sometimes simulated to disguise a 
deliberate purpose of fraud. Another statute, not less important 
in protecting the rights of the overlord, was the Q^da 
%r)v' tores Emiptores, first issued in 1276, and again in 1290; an 
act intended to prevent the abuse of the principle of 
subinfeudation. It had been the practice of subtenants to part 
with portions of their land by creating other subtenants who in 
turn might continue the subdivision and subgranting indefinitely. 
In this way the overlord's power was seriously diminished, and 
there was constant danger that the tenants might grant away so 
much land that there would not be enough left to bear the obliga- 
tions of the fief. By the Statute Quia Emptores the new tenant 
escaped from the lordship of the last grantor and became the vassal 
of the original lord. This statute it was supjjosed would benefit 
particularly the great barons, who strongly supported it in the par- 
liament. Its more conspicuous effects, however, were greatly to 
increase the number of tenants in chief, and thus, by breaking down 
the hierarchical gradations of feudalism, hasten the time when all 
should stand in the same relation to the king. An even more 
important act apjieared at Winchester in 1285, which 
wfncnesler ^^'^^i^^d sonie of the older institutions of the Anglo- 
Saxon period that during the two centuries of feudal- 
ism had been allowed largely to fall into decay. It regulated the 
action of the hundred, revived the hue and cry, reimposed the 
duties of watch and ward, and reenacted the obligation of the 
fyrd which Henry II. had once reorganized in the Assize of Arms. 
By this act every man was bound to aid in the pursuit of criminals 
when the hue and cry was raised, and to hold himself in readiness 
to serve the king under arms in case of invasion or rebellion; every 
hundred also was to be responsible for the crimes committed within 
its limits, and every walled town was to close its gates at sunset 



302 THE CHARTEK CONEIRMED [edwakd i. 

and compel every stranger to give an account of himself before the 
magistrates. 

Like the first Plantagenet also Edward saw that the way to 
bring the crown into toirch with the nation was through a more 

perfect organization of the royal courts. Henry II. had 
refwinsof definitely established the Curia Regis as the central court 
The courts of the national judicial system. Its activities, however, 

had steadily extended their scope, and tlie volume of busi- 
ness had inei'eased enormously. Yet up to the thirteenth century 
one staff of judges had served for all departments of justice. But 
in the thirteenth century the j)olicy of differentiating the work of 
the Curia, already forecasted in the reservation of certain business 
for certain sittings,^ was fully carried out, and by the close of 
Henry III.'s reign the ancient Curia Kegis had been divided into 
three separate and distinct courts: the Coui't of Exchequer to 
hear all cases touching the revenue, the Court of Common Pleas to 
receive civil cases, and the Court of King's Bench to deal with cases 
affecting the king's interests and criminal questions reserved for 
his judgment. The chief justiciar, however, still remained the 
bond of union of these courts until Edward finally abolished the 
common presidency by giving to each court its own chief. The 
common law courts, furthermore, had their limitations as instru- 
ments for the redress of wrongs. Their decisions were necessarily 
based upon precedent and the strict letter of the law. But in the 
complexity of human actions many questions may arise to which 
no existing law applies or, if applied, may work actual injustice to 
the individual. Henry II. had reserved all snch cases for the 
special action of the king in council ; but Edward I. gave a still 
wider extension to this equity jurisdiction of the crown and 
referred such cases to the special care of the chancellor. Thus 
there grew up about the chancellor the fourth of the series of great 
royal courts — the Court of Equity. The Chancery, however, as a 
court of equity was not definitely organized until the time of 
Edward III., nor was its equity jurisdiction permanently estab- 
lished until the reign of Richard II. 

' See p. 194. 



1289] THE ROYAL REVENUES 303 

Edward I., furthermore, understood that the strength of his 

courts consisted in rendering real and not fictitious justice. He 

therefore attacked unsparingly the abuses by means of 

Reform, of which the iudicial circuits had become engines of extor- 

the courts. J , ° 

tion, hated and feared by the people. In 1289 all the 
king's judges were brought forward on charges of bribery, and all 
were found guilty except two. The chief justice of the Common 
Pleas had amassed a fortune of 100,000 marks. Nothing could 
more strikingly show the extent of the corruption which had crept 
into all branches of service during the inefficient administration of 
Henry III. 

Edward's love of justice was real; yet he had the faults of a 

legal mind, and was too often willing in construing the law to 

strain it in his own favor. While he seldom broke the 

ravcmclf 1®^*®^" o^ *^® 1^^^' ^^® ^^^^^^ violated its spirit. Most of 
his legal chicanery, however, was prompted by the 
incessant demands of his treasury. It was his misfortune to find 
the throne encumbered with debt, from which he was never able 
entirely to extricate himself. He was by no means extravagant 'like 
his father, but his plans for the monarchy required more money 
than could be raised by the old methods. The crown domains, 
moreover, had been greatly reduced by the follies of John and 
Henry. The incomes from feudal dues had also declined with 
feudalism. Scutages and similar levies were not worth the trouble 
which it cost to collect them. The courts returned their fines to 
the royal treasury, but this was not a revenue which could be 
wisely developed. In his last year Henry II. had instituted a tax 
on personal property; and although as first introduced it was 
designed only to secure money for the Crusade, the Saladin tithe, 
it had since become the most common form of taxation. It 
depended on a parliamentary grant and varied from a thirtieth to 
a seventh. But such relief could be only temporary, and parlia- 
ment was loath to repeat it too frequently. Edward, therefore, 
was obliged to search for still other sources of revenue in order to 
secure a permanent and steady income. He found the answer to 
his quest in the possibilities offered by the rapidly developing com- 
merce of England, especially by the wool trade of which England 



304 THE CHARTER CONFIRMED [Edward l 

virtually enjoyed the monoiDoly. England since the close of the 
barons' war had been comparatively free from private warfare and 
quite removed from the jDOssibility of invasion. She had brought 
her rural interests to a high state of prosperity and had become 
the great wool-growing country of Europe. The old way of taking 
a portion of the goods going in or out of the country was no longer 
satisfactory to king or merchants; and accordingly in 1275 a 

parliament at Westminster granted to the crown the 
Vrntom^ms I'^'S^^ ^^ levying an export duty upon wools, skins, and 

leather, the so-called Great Custom.^ in return for a 
renunciation by the king of his ancient right of levying upon all 
goods entering or leaving the kingdom. This was the legal begin- 
ning of the English customs-revenue. It is not now considered 
good policy for a country to tax its exports ; but at that time, the 
Flemings were absolutely dependent on England for the wool to sup- 
ply their looms. So that, in this case at least, the tax had to be paid 
by the foreign consumer. The king still continued from time to time 

to use the right of prise in regard to other commodities. 
Carta & i & 

Mercatoria, But by the Carta Mercatoria of 1303, customs on wine, 

1303. 

cloth, and other articles of merchandise were formally 
recognized and regulated. By the time of Edward III. these had 

become a regular part of the ordinary revenue. Another 
Distraint of pesort of Edward for restoring his treasury was known 

as Distraint of KnigJttltood. In the summer of 1278 he 
issued a writ compelling every freeliolder who possessed an estate 
of £20 a year to assume the obligations of a knight, or to pay what 
amounted to a heavy fine. The advantage was twofold. Those 
who obeyed increased by so much the body of knighthood. While 
those who did not wish to assume the obligations of knighthood, 
gladly paid the fine and by so much increased the revenue. In 
1282 all persons possessing an estate of £20 a year, were ordered to 
provide themselves with horse and armor. 

In these schemes for raising money, the Jews also did not 
escape the attention of the royal financier. From the time of the 
Conquest they had occupied a singular jjlace in England. In the 
age of the Crusades it is not strange that they were hated as 
infidels. The most shocking crimes, involving murder, sacrilege. 



1290] THE EXPULSION OF THE JEWS 305 

and even cannibalism were popularly imputed to them. The real 

source of popular hatred, however, was perhaps the fact that the 

Jews held virtually the monopoly of the banking busi- 

The Jews and j^ggg ^f Europe. They were the money lenders and usu- 

the revenues. r j j 

rers of the time, and by these means had accumulated 
vast wealth. In the middle ages the propriety of taking interest for 
the use of money was not understood, and usury, as all interest 
taking was called, had been condemned by the church. Not 
infrequently the hatred and suspicions of the people expressed 
themselves in violent outbursts. The first year of Richard's reign 
had been disgraced by a massacre at York. But the Jew always 
had a strong protector in the. king, who needed him for his 
money's sake, since a large share of the Jew's profits was sure to 
come ultimately into the royal treasury as blackmail levied under 
the guise of protection. No small part of the extravagance of 
Henry III. had been met by tallages levied upon Jews. Some of 
the nobles also used the Jewish brokers as leeches to draw wealth 
from the people, in order that they might compel the Jew to dis- 
gorge later. 'J^he great men of the time like Grosseteste, Simon 
de Montfort, and Edward himself shared in the popular autijDathy. 
Edward at first tried restriction; he would not allow the Jews to 
hold real property ; he compelled them also to wear a distinctive 
dress, which greatly increased the grievous burden of their lot 
by making the Jew always a marked man in the streets where the 
hoodlum element, by no means a peculiarity of the modern city, 
was always ready to take the Jew's distinctive garb as a challenge. 
Even these annoyances, however, did not satisfy the popular 
clamor, and in 1290, Edward expelled this much abused people 
from the country altogether, allowing them to take only their mov- 
able property with them.^ A grateful parliament granted him a 
tax of a fifteenth. The great banking houses of Italy were already 
coming into prominence and from this time the money business of 
England fell largely into their hands. 

The reforms of Edward, thus far, were reforms Avhich any abso- 
lute monarch might have instituted who was bent upon adminis- 

' Thev were not allowed to return until the time of Croinwell. 



30G THE CHAKTER COISTFIRMED [edward i. 

tering his trust upon rational principles; but sooner or later 
the great underlying thought of the Charter, the right of 
The new ^^® nation not only to fair treatment by the gov- 
probiem. ernment but to a fair sliare in the government, must 
force itself upon Edward. 

The nation as the basis of political organization was hardly 
recognized in the thirteenth century. Political unity had been 
sacrificed in the upgrowth of feudal classes. The 
F'f f's*"' multitude of petty sovereignties which had marked the 
earlier stages of feudal society, had been slowly merged 
in the expanding powers of the national monarchy, but the baron- 
age, the great feudal landholding aristocracy, still constituted a 
society by itself, with its own peculiar . rights and privileges. 
Alongside of this feudal community, moreover, bound to it by a 
thousand intangible ties, and yet not of it, there had grown up 
another community, the ecclesiastical, with its own aims, its own 
methods, its own laws, its own courts, and finally its own complete 
and well-defined organization ; on the one hand, asserting its inde- 
pendence of the feudal society, and on the other, its supremacy 
within the feudal society. Furthermore, as the middle centuries 
progressed, with the increased wealth and numbers of the urban 
population, there had grown up still a third community, or rather 
grou]) of communities, which by reason of numerous privileges and 
immunities, conferred generally by charter, had won a certain inde- 
pendence of the feudal and ecclesiastical societies, and formed a 
group by itself. As yet the members of this third group' were 
united only by the possession of common privileges; they had 
less coherence than the individuals of the feudal group, and noth- 
ing of the unity which was conferred upon the ecclesiastical group 
by its hierarchical organization. This threefold grouping, or rather 
separation, of the free elements of the nation was not peculiar to 
England, but was characteristic of the feudal state wherever it 
existed. The several groups were known familiarly as the Estates, 
and their relative importance and dignity in each case was indi- 
cated by the preeminence which was given to the ecclesiastical as 
the First Estate, to the feudal as the Second Estate, and to the 
burffhers as the Third Estate. 



THE COMMONS 307 

In England, however, this threefold division early began to 

assume certain features which in time became characteristic and 

which go far to explain why popular institutions developed 

development a strength and importance upon English soil as nowhere 

in England. ° , . -^ , ^^ 5^ ^^ 

upon the continent. As early as Magna Charta a dis- 
tinction had been recognized between the great barons who were 
summoned to the national council by name, and the lesser barons 
who were summoned through the sheriffs in a body. But the 
attendance of the body of small landholders upon the meetings of 
the great council was for many reasons impracticable, and even in 
John's reign the expedient had been resorted to of allowing the 
knights to be represented by delegates chosen at the shire court 
under the direction of the sheriff. By the close of the century this 
expedient had become a regularly established custom. The eccle- 
siastical or First Estate, as indicated above, had a divided interest. 
Its members, however, had very early acquired a definite status 
of their own. They had their special councils and separate courts, and 
preferred to hold their own separate parliaments, or convocations, 
and discuss and vote their grants separately. The great church- 
men, however, the bishops and abbots, were also barons, or feudal 
tenants of the crown, and as such continued to sit with the great 
lay barons in the national council. Here then v/as a cross division 
which cut through the two higher estates, severing the great 
barons, ecclesiastical or lay, from the inferior members of their 
respective orders. Now, as a matter of fact, the interests and sym- 
pathies of the lower orders of both knights and clergy were far 
more nearly allied to those of the towns than to those of the great 
barons, and thus very soon after the crown began to summon dele- 
gates from the towns, it became customary for the representatives 
of the towns and the representatives of the shire to meet together 
in an assembly distinct from that of the great barons. Thus the 
Commons, so called, came at last to represent not simj)ly an estate, 
but the people, the nation. The lower orders of the clergy by pre- 
ferring the convocation, undoubtedly lost a distinct and separate rep- 
resentation in this more popular branch of the national assembly; 
but in as much as their interests were really merged in those of the 
towns and the shires, they too were virtually represented in the 



308 THE CHARTER CO?^FIRMED [edwakd I. 

more numerous body. Thus the original threefold division of the 
national council into separate Estates, which on the continent hard- 
ened into an insurmountable obstacle to the progress of popular 
institutions, in England gave way to a twofold division in which 
there were really but two classes represented, — the titled nobility 
and the untitled people, or the nation. In other words, in Eng- 
land the original Third Estate absorbed the lower ranks of the 
First and Second Estates ; and since it thus came to include the 
body of the wealth and population of botli city and country, the 
great undivided middle class, its representatives in the national 
council soon gained a unity and influence which the simple deputies 
of the towns never attained upon the continent, and compelled the 
crown at last to recognize their importance as the source of its 
authority and the support of its power. 

This final goal, however, was not reached until long after the 

age of Edward I. There is no evidence that either Simon or 

Edward ever had any thought of attaining such a result 

EdirariVs ^s this ; or that the expedient of summoning delegates 

in<itir( III ' -^ _ . 

gitmniiniiuij from the towns was consciously designed as a step 
the towiiti. . 

toward giving the people a more direct influence in the 

government. Simon sought to find in the lower orders the support 
which the barons had denied him. Edward needed money and 
thought only of making the wealth of the country gentry and the 
burghers tributary to the needs of his treasury. And even in this, 
he appears like a man who is feeling his way toward a goal of which 
he is at first uncertain, stumbling at last by a series of experi- 
ments upon the only possible principle by which that end might be 
attained; not the high and lofty end of bestowing liberties upon the 
nation, but the entirely ignoble, yet practical, end of securing new 

sources of revenue for the crown. Thus in his first parlia- 
parliaments ments he began by summoning the knights of the shire 

in addition to the prelates and barons. Sometimes, 
however, he brought together only the magnates in the old way. 
In 1290 the great barons met to deliberate upon a proposed statute, 
and the knights came later to take part in voting a tax. In 1282, 
when the expenses were unusually heavy on account of the second 
Welsh war, the king sent around to the different shires and 



1283-1295] THE MODEL PARLIAMENT 309 

boroughs to ask each community separately for its aid. The 
results of these local appeals were not satisfactory, and the next 
year he brought together on the same day two separate assemblies, 
one at York, and one at Northampton. It is to be noted further, 
that the principle underlying the feudal state is recognized in all of 
these early efforts to secure aid from the nation ; the crown had no 
right to levy taxes directly upon the people, whether lord or simple, 
other than those prescribed by the implied feudal contract, or as 
established in the customs of each locality. If more were needed, 
it could be secured only by voluntary grant on the part of each 
class, or of each corporation. It is, therefore, a marked step in 
advance when it is recognized that the consent of each individual 
separately is not necessary to the legality of such a grant, and that 
such consent may be given for him by his representatives, or by a 
majority of the representatives of the class to which he belongs, 
acting collectively. 

This important principle was explicitly recognized in the call- 
ing of the famous parliament of 1295, which on account of its 
completeness was long known as the "Model Parlia- 

The Model , , x . » . rm i i 

Pariiaraent ment. It was a time of general anxiety. I he old 

of 1295. 

Welsh question had been replaced by an even more 
serious Scottish question, and the long war had began which 
was Edward's reward for interfering in a Scottish dynastic 
quarrel. The Scots, moreover, had found eager allies in the 
French, who had their own perpetual quarrel on with their rivals 
across the Channel, and Philip IV. 's fleets were threatening the 
English coasts. The king was beset on all sides. In his need he 
appealed to the common interest of the nation. "It is a most Just 
law," he declared, "that what concerns all should be approved by 
all, and that common dangers should be met by measures provided 
in common." The war was neither the king's war, nor the barons' 
war; all classes were interested, and all classes ought to bear their 
share of its burdens. Accordingly, he summoned not only the great 
churchmen as heretofore, but also directed that there be sent one 
proctor from the chapter of each cathedral, and two proctors from 
the clergy of each diocese. In the same manner he summoned the 
great barons as heretofore, bat directed also that two knights be 



310 THE CHAETER COKFIRMED [edward i. 

sent from each shire and that two citizens he sent from each city or 
borough. For the first time all the different elements of the nation 
represented by the free subjects of the king, met together in a 
national council, coming, at the king's request, so constituted that 
the representatives of each estate should have power to levy a 
tax upon all the members of that estate. It is interesting to note 
that the results fully Justified the confidence of the king. The 
First Estate, the clergy, voted a tenth of their movables ; the Second 
Estate composed of the great barons and knights,^ an eleventh ; 
while the representatives of the towns outdid them all in loyalty 
by voting a seventh. 

In the Model Parliament Edward had established a pre- 
cedent which was to be invaluable in the future. The clergy 
apparently did not take kindly to the idea of merging 

vahieof their independence in a secular parliament, and pre- 
precedent. ^ ± ' j. 

ferred rather to vote their gifts through the two great 
archiepiscopal convocations of Canterbury and York, so that the 
lower clergy soon ceased to attend the parliaments altogether. The 
towns, however, had no other common organization, and with 
loyal enthusiasm they hailed the i-ecognition of their importance 
and the opportunity of bearing their share of the public burdens. 
They were still separated from the knights of the shire; 
tlieir right to a share in the general deliberations of the coujicil 
was by no means clearly defined or fully recognized; yet they had 
entered parliament to stay, their wealth and the needs of the crown 
were guarantees that they should receive a hearing. 

Edward's relations to the church mark as complete a departure 
from the policy of his father as his relations to the national 

council. He was slow, however, to break with the 
Edward and papacy. He needed the support of the clergy, and 

the popes generally were not averse to the heavy 
grants which Edward continued to demand. But in 1294 
Boniface VIII. began his reign; a man whose ideals of papal 
prerogative were taken from the era of Innocent III. and who 
seemed unconscious of the deep currents of national life which the 

' The knights of the shire still deliberated and voted with the great 
barons. 



1296] EDWARD AND THE CHURCH 311 

thirteenth century had set in motion. In 1296 he issued the 
famous bull, Clericis Laicos, which forbade the clergy to pay 
any taxes to the temporal authority. The measure was primarily 
aimed at Philip IV. of France; but it affected every state of 
Europe and fairly opened the question of the place of the church 
in the new national systems. Were the clergy of England or of 
France a part of the nation and liable to its duties as subjects of 
the national king, or were they solely the subjects of the pope, and 
as such were they and theirs exempt from the exactions of the 
national government? It was really the old issue which Henry II. 
and Becket had fought out, only in a new form. Then it had been 
the independence of the church courts which was at stake; now 
it was the independence of the church treasury. Archbishop 
Winchelsey supported the papal pretension, and when in 1296 a 
parliament modeled on that of the preceding year, was called at 
Bury St. Edmunds, the clergy under the archbishop's leadership 
refused to make a contribution and presented the pope's bull in 
defense. "We have two lords," said the archbishop, "the 
one spiritual, the other temporal. Obedience is due to both, but 
most to the spiritual." Edward's reply was characteristic of the 
man. He did not threaten like John to put out the eyes, or slifc 
the noses of disobedient churchmen; he simply applied their own 
doctrine. If they would not contribute to the support of the gov- 
ernment, they should be treated as aliens and not have the 
protection of subjects. In other words, they should have no 
rights in the king's courts. The sentence amounted to a 
decree of outlawry. The clergy might be robbed or mal- 
treated or even murdered with impunity, for the civil author- 
ity refused to punish. The results reveal how rapidly Europe 
was receding from the ideals of the past. The time had been 
when even emperors quailed before the ban of the church; but 
now compared with the excommunication of the king the ban 
of the church was only so much stage thunder. Before the king's 
ban the church bowed its head and the proudest prelate was silent. 
Edward followed up the sentence of outlawry with the further 
threat, that unless the clergy yielded before Easter, he would him- 
self confiscate their lands, and the clergy knew the king too well 



312 THE CHAETER CONFIRMED [edwaed i. 

to hope for one moment that his threat would not be carried out. 
Winchelsey personally refused to yield and sacrificed his lay 
estates, but he was wise enough to advise his clergy to make the 
best terms they could individually. They were quick to profit by 
the permission and soon made their peace with the king, for the most 
part, paying the money under the name of gifts, sometimes passing 
it through the hands of a third party and sometimes leaving it at 
a convenient place where the royal officers might find it. 

The new struggle with France had reopened the old question 

of service on the continent. The French king had naturally 

selected Gascony as the first object of attack, and 

Quarrel of Edward proposed to send his earls to defend Gascony 

Edward and -, ., t • it ,i t,- ± -^^^ ^ 

his barons, while he m person led anotner expedition to inlanders. 
The English barons, however, felt little interest in Gas- 
cony. Wales and vScotland were near at home and the English 
were always ready to respond to a call to defend their borders or 
cripple their hereditary foes by counter invasion; bat it mattered 
little to them whether Gascony were held by an English king 
or not. In an assembly of the nobles in 1297, the king laid 
his plans before his earls and barons, but was met by the protest 
of Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, the Marshal, and HumJrey de 
Bohun, Earl of Hereford, the Constable, who fell back on their 
traditional rights and refused to leave England save as they fol- 
lowed the king's person. "By God, Sir Earl," cried the angry 
king, "you shall either go or hang." "By that same oath. Sir 
King," coolly answered Bigod, "I shall neither go nor hang." 
The assembly broke up in confusion. The two earls called their 
people to arms and were soon at the head of fifteen hundred men. 
It was the crisis of Edward's reign. His ambitious foreign 
policy had imposed a serious burden upon the nation. The splen- 
did response of the year 1295 had been followed by the 

Protest of protest of the clergv in 1296; and now in 1297 came 
the harons. >- ^-^ ' 

the yet more stubborn and dangerous protest of the 
barons. For the refusal of the earls to go to Gascony was only a 
pretext to cover the growing suspicion of the Estates of the king, 
and the feeling that by these aids and exactions dangerous prec- 
edents were to be left to the future that might one day put in 



COISTFIRMATION OF THE CHARTERS 313 

jeopardy the rights and privileges which the fathers had won. 
The king, however, was in no mind to yield or renonnce his 
proposed expedition, and in order to raise the funds which the 
parliament had failed to grant, he seized the wool of the mer- 
chants and made requisitions upon the shires on the basis of 
former grants. He also issued orders for all who held lands of £20 
a year or upwards to meet in London under arms on July 7. 
Bigod and Bohun refused to move ; but the king, by promising to 
confirm the charters, persuaded the leaders, who had come together 
for the military levy, to consent to a grant of one-eighth of the mov- 
ables of the barons and knights, and one-fifth of the towns. The 
action was altogether too much in the spirit of Edward's predeces- 
sors, and Bigod and Bohun at once sent to Edward a formal 
protest in the name of "the whole community of the land." 
They declared that the numerous tallages and other exactions were 
devouring their resources, and that they were utterly ruined. 
Then in remarkably bold and clear-spoken words they ]3roceeded 
to demand that the Great Charter and the Charter of the Forests 
be confirmed, and pointedly hinted that with vScotland hostile it 
would be wise for the king to stay at home. 

The document reached Edward when he was on the point of 

embarking for the war. Such outspoken words from subjects had 

been common enough in his father's day, but had not 

Confirmation i^een heard before in Edward's reign. His own sense 

of the Char- o 

ber 5^1297^' ^^ Justice told him that he had gone too far, and his 
better wisdom would not allow him to come to an open 
rupture with his barons. Yet he was not ready to submit, or give 
up his plan of invading France. He avoided a direct answer, 
therefore, on the plea that he could not act without his council, and 
that it was impossible then to bring them together. The two earls, 
however, were not to be put off by evasion, and when the departure 
of the king assured them that their petition was to be ignored, 
they at once marched to London and forbade the royal officers to 
collect the eighth, which had been granted at the London levy, and, 
further, protested against the seizure of the wool. Edward had left 
his son with his councillors to do the best they could in quieting the 
barons. But to do this they found that they must summon a 



314 THE CHAKTEE CONFIRMED [edward 1. 

regular parliament and secure the aid in a lawful manner. The par- 
liament, however, came together, not to grant the aid, but to insist 
upon the promised confirmation of the charters. The original taxing 
clause, which had been omitted from William Marshal's reissue of 
the Great Charter, it will be remembered, had never been formally 
restored, although the crown had since generally recognized the 
principle. The earls, therefore, insisted upon the introduction of 
several new clauses, by which they recognized the ordinary aids 
fixed by ancient feudal custom but demand that the king should 
again pledge himself not to claim as a right aids which the 
people had granted of their own will, and that such aids should be 
taken only by the "common consent of the realm." The king 
had also taken advantage of the vast increase in the wool trade to 
levy a customs-duty — the maltote, — which amounted to a virtual 
confiscation of a large part of the profits of the trade. The earls 
insisted that the king should renounce the maltote and should 
pledge himself and his heirs not again "to take any such thing, or 
any other, without the common consent and good will of the 
commonalty of the realm." The Great Custom of 1275, however, 
was to be retained. In this form the charters were confirmed by 
the council in the name of the absent king, and then sent to him 
at Ghent to be ratified.^ The victory of the earls was final. 
Edward subsequently, like John, obtained from the pope a dis- 
pensation which relieved him of the obligation of keeping his 
pledge, but he dared not make use of it. The barons at last had 
found the right weapon by which to hold the king to his word ; 
and for several years to come, they insisted upon the renewal of 
the king's pledges as the condition of each grant. 

Tlie Confirmation of the Charters completed the work which 

Langton and the barons had begun at Eunnymede. What had 

been "recognized as a usage, now became a matter of 

Work of 

Langwh written right." Henceforth, no general tax could be 
legally taken from the nation without the consent of 
its representatives. The constitutional importance of this prin- 
ciple can not be overestimated. It made the king dependent for 
his power upon the good will of his people. It made it impossible 

^Stubbs, C. H., II, p. 148. 



1297] langton's work completed 315 

for an evil king who once lost the sympathy of the nation, to 
carry ont his designs by legal methods. It furnished the vantage 
ground from which the nation, in working out the problem of con- 
stitutional government, might take the next great upward step by 
establishing the responsibility of the king's ministers to the parlia- 
ment. 



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PART in— NATIONAL ENGLAND 

THE ERA OF NATIONAL AWAKENING 

BOOK I— SOCIAL AWAKENING 
FROM 1297 TO 1485 



CHAPTER I 



THE NEW ERA; EDWARD I. AND THE BEGINNING OF THE WARS 

OF FOREIGN CONQUEST. THE STRUGGLE OF 

THE SCOTS FOR INDEPENDENCE 

EDWARD'/., 1297-1307 

THE DISPUTED SUCCESSION TO THE SCOTTISH THRONE 
David I. 

Henry, Earl of! Huntingdon 



William the Lion 
1165-13U 



David, Earl of Huntingdon 



Albxandek II. 
1214-13-19 



Alexander III. 

1249-1286 



Margaret = Alan Isabella = Robert Bruce Ada = Henry, 

I of Galloway I of Annandale | Baron 



Devorguilla = John Balliol 



Margaret=Eric of Margaret John Balliol, 

I Norway of Galloway k. 1392-1296 

Margaret, the John Comyn, 

Maid of Norway, murdered by 

d. 1390. Bruce, 1306 



Robert Bruce, 

d. 1295 

I 

Robert Bruce, 

d. 1305 

ROBKRT I., 
k. 1306-1339 



Hastings 
Henry Hastings 
John Hastings 



A new era in English history begins with the last years of 
Edward's reign. With the determination of the internal structure 

of the government, English kings began to adopt what 
?f£^™;f"fi'"/ the modern politician would call a more brilliant policy 

plunging the nation into a long series of extensive 
foreign wars, which in turn reacted powerfully upon all phases of 
national life, quickening national feeling, stimulating new forms 
of economic activity, and ending at last in social upheaval and 
civil strife. The remote issues of the era were also as marked as 

317 



318 THE NEW ERA [edwardI. 

tliey were varied and far-reaching. The general intellectual and 
moral awakening expressed itself, on the one hand, in a deepening 
hatred of the foreigner and a growing estrangement from the 
papacy; on the other, in the creation of a distinctive English 
literature, a stronger life in the universities, and the quickening 
interest of the people in public affairs. The rapid development of 
the economic resources of the nation stimulated the growtli of 
cities and the expansion of commerce, accompanied by the disap- 
pearance of villainage and the opening of the first breach between 
"labor and capital." The creation of a national military spirit in 
contrast with the old class militarism of feudalism, born of such 
victories as Crecy and Agincourt, laid the foundation of England's 
military prestige and opened the age-long struggle for the sover- 
eignty of the seas. Parliament also rapidly assumed unity, form, 
and dignity, becoming the controlling instrument of government; 
a position which it surrendered only after the nobles had shattered 
their strength in the dynastic struggles of the fifteenth century. 
Premonitions of this new life had long since been felt by the 
nation. The people had taken a profound interest in the consti- 
tutional struggles of the thirteenth century. They had 

PrcmimMom felt the couflict between the unvoiced aspirations of the 
of new life. '■ 

age and the institutions which were supposed to embody 
its best thought. At a time when the temporal glories of the 
papacy were approaching zenith, when bishops had become 
worldly politicians, and monasteries had declined into rich land- 
owning institutions and love of wealth and ease had obscured their 
original purpose, the old primitive spirit of Christianity was strug- 
gling for utterance in the saintly lives of sacrifice and 
TheFran- service of the friars, the "Salvationists" of the thir- 
teenth century. New economic and social conditions 
were crowding the cities with a helpless and dependent population. 
Sanitation was practically unknown. Surface wells and surface 
drainage were the rule. Habitations were small, dingy, and over- 
crowded. Town government was largely in the hands of the gilds 
or the communes, the members of which did not fail to provide for 
their own families by seeking high and aizy quarters where they 
reared their comfortable dwellings ; but below them lay the slums, 



1324] THE FEIARS 319 

never an inconsiderable part of the medieval city, where poverty 
and vice gravitated in hopeless squalor. Neither the town organi- 
zation nor the church felt any responsibility for the condition of 
this outcast class. Beyond the isolated efforts of individuals, 
little was done to alleviate their condition. New forms of dis- 
ease also appeared, conspicuously the leprosy which had been 
brought back from the Crusades; diseases that fattened in filthy 
lanes and crowded quarters, appalling in hideousness and fatality. 
Into these stews of wretchedness came the "Gray Brothers," the 
followers of St. Francis of Assisi, who had renounced home and 
kindred that they might care for the outcast poor. In 1224 the 
first of the Gray Friars reached England. Heretofore the monks 
had sought the silence and seclusion of the wilderness, where they 
might spend their lives in a kind of selfish devotion, undisturbed 
by the sad sights of the world which surrounded them. But the 
brothers of St. Francis sought rather the very centers of popula- 
tion, where the human hive swarmed and reeked. Hither they 
came, two by two, without scrip or purse, living like the lazzaroni 
whom they sought to help, sleeping under arches or lying on the 
church porches among the beggars, bringing with them their Gospel 
of good Samaritanism. Their chief settlement was fixed in New- 
gate, near the butchers' shambles, in a spot which went by the 
unsavory name of "Stinking Lane." 

From the first the growth of the order was rapid. Godly men 
felt the reality of religion such as this, and many hailed the oppor- 
tunity of reaching a helping hand to the suffering about 
apthe'm^der ^J^^m. The people recognized the genuineness of the 
new spirit that was taking hold of the church and gave 
the friars their confidence without reserve. Good Bishop 
Grosseteste of Lincoln wrote of their work to the pope: "0 that 
your holiness could see how devoutly and humbly the people run 
to hear the word of life, to confess their sins, to be instructed in 
the rules for daily life ; how much profit the monks take from imi- 
tation of them." 

With the rapid growth of the order, its usefulness extended 
into new fields. St. Francis had sought to avoid the temptations 
which had turned aside the older orders, by discouraging learn- 



320 THE NEW ERA [edward 1. 

ing among his followers as lie had forbidden wealth. But the 
efforts of the brothers to care for tbe sick and improve the sani- 
tary conditions which surrounded the poor, led them 
f'nvsnce^ almost against their will to take up the study of medicine 
and the physical sciences; while the wide popularity of 
their preaching and their constant warfare against the strange 
opinions which Crusaders had brought back from the east, com- 
pelled them to study theology and logic. Into these new fields 
they entered with the same consecrated fervor, and could soon 
boast the greatest doctors of the age. Eoger Bacon, the 
precursor of the modern scientist, was of their number. Many 
became teachers in the universities, where, as at Oxford, they 
helped to mould the thought of the coming generation. They 
were also quick to see the interest of their wards, the people, in 
the great political struggles of the century, and did not hesitate to 
plunge into the strife for the Charter. It was largely due to their 
influence that Earl Simon was so well understood and supported 
by the common people. 

Side by side with the Franciscans, and hardly less famous, 
toiled the Dominicans. St. Dominic, the founder of the order, 
had felt the shortcoming of the church in another 
icans reach direction. lie had seen the growth of heresy and un- 
" belief among the higher orders, and had justly traced 
its cause to the prevailing worldliness of the church and the heart- 
less indifference of its agents to the needs of the people. He pro- 
posed to establish an order of popular preachers, who should meet 
.heretic or infidel u])on his own ground, and prove by devotion 
and piety that C!hristianity was something more than a system by 
which gorgeous bishops could be enriched or abbots fattened. The 
Dominicans reached England three years before the Franciscans, 
but heresy had never taken such hold upon the English as upon the 
people of southern France, and hence the Dominicans, the "Black 
Friars," never became as popular or as influential in England as 
the Franciscans, the Gray Friars. 

The universities also felt the new life. The gathering of poor 
scholars at Oxford swelled rapidly during the thirteenth century. 
The course of study was still meagre and narrow. Latin was the 



1238-1264] THE UNIVERSITIES 32l 

language of the class room. Greek was practically unknown and 
Aristotle reached the student only through garbled translations. 
Logic was the backbone of the educational system and 
'sities^^^'^^' dialectics was largely pursued for its own sake. Hair- 
splitting became a science, and the search for truth was 
sacrificed to the love of bandying empty words. Yet thinking men, 
like Roger Bacon, felt the barrenness of the methods in vogue, and 
urged not only a freer use of existing knowledge, but the search 
into wider fields. Student life and student thought, always rough, 
free, and hearty, was inclined to outrun the dignified pace of the 
teachers, and, often in closer contact with the people than the 
church, refused to be bound by existing traditions, readily respond- 
ing with the reckless fervor of youth to the stimulation of new and 
high ideals. Hence student influence was generally to be found on 
the side of the man who durst question the right of the feudal lord 
or the authority of the wealthy clergy. In 1238 the students of 
Oxford openly attacked the papal legate, and in 1264 the whole 
student body turned out to join the party of Earl Simon. 

While the poor were suffering and the pious friars were grap- 
pling with the serious problems of the age, the rich were leading 
an unreal life which they stimulated by mock sentiment 
and by turning serious matters into play. The early 
Crusades had provided the wild baronage of Europe with a real 
sentiment in which they sought to realize the "ideal of Christian 
knighthood." The champion of the cross found ample scope for 
the cultivation of all the noblest traits of manhood in facing hard- 
ship and danger in defense of the poor and the oppressed, often 
to the sacrifice of life itself. The noblest ideals were set forth in 
the solemn and impressive ceremonies by which the knight was 
ushered into the duties of his order. He bound himself to 
observe the laws of honor, to fight fairly, to protect the church, to 
defend women, and to act with courtesy to his equals and with 
deference to his superiors. But with the decline of the religious 
fervor which attended the early Crusades the vows of chivalry 
lost their significance. Its noble sentiment became mere senti- 
mentalism, which failed to gloss the heartless brutality of the 
noble. The hero became a "gentleman," who prided himself on 



322 THE NEW EEA [e 



Edward i. 



Lis class, and despised and abused those who were socially beneath 
him. His fine sentiments lost their meaning in the narrow self- 
ishness of a class spirit which felt no pity and recognized no duty 
toward peasant or burgher. For a time the great constitutional 
struggle of the thirteenth century furnished him with a true 
moral motive, but too often his position was determined by the 
selfish interest of the hour rather than by any true devotion to the 
cause of liberty, and if he drew near to the commons, it was 
because he needed the help of the burgher's pike or the burgher's 
purse. When the reign of Edward drew to its close the ques- 
tions which had roused men like Earl Simon were settled, and 
in the wars of the new century the knight rarely felt any 
higher motive than glory or privilege, or worse, plunder. 
Chivalry became more polished, more gorgeous, but also more 
hollow, more heartless. It sought its victories not in conflicts 
Avaged in defense of virtue or weakness or princi|)le, but at 
grand tournaments, where bodies of knights or squires joined in 
combat for the purpose of displaying their skill or courage. Fre- 
quently the tournament proper was varied with the joust where 
two knights engaged each other with blunted spears, the one 
attempting to hurl the other from his horse. Such combats were 
always attended with much danger and frequently ended fatally. 
The lamented Henry II. of France lost his life as a sacrifice to the 
popular sport, and Edward I. of England, while on his eastern 

expedition, narrowly escaped paying the same forfeit in 
"Little Battle ^ . , /n n , i ,1 ;.t -^^i 

of chaion," a tournament at C'halon, long known as the Little 

2273, 

Battle of Chaion," where after a desperate struggle 
and the loss of many lives, he and his party finally came off victo- 
rious. At these bloody orgies, ladies presided and awarded the 
prizes. Kenilworth became famous as the place where Edward 
held his "Round Table" in imitation of the imaginary glories of 
the fabled Arthur's court. Hither flocked the gay and frivolous 
worldlings of the court, the king, his knights and their ladies, 
"clad all in silk." The climax of this hollow extravagance 
was reached during the reign of Edward III. ; a fitting intro- 
duction to the era- of luxury and cruelty which followed. Earlier 
kings, like Henry IL, had forbidden tournaments altogethej', 



SCOTLAND AND THE ENGLISH CEOWN 323 

but Eicliard had not hesitated to license them for money. Openly 
encouraged by such kings as Edward I. and Edward III., the 
tilt-yard remained for nearly three centuries the chief amusement 
of the nobility. 

The era of foreign wars began with the attempt of Edward to 
subjugate Scotland. Ireland had already been partly subdued and 
placed under English governors. The Welsh had beeu 
nim^ofth'e Crushed and the cantreds organized into English shires 
Scotiand^^'^ and hundreds. These early successes of Edward as well as 
his fondness for order and harmony, naturally suggested 
a single sovereignty over the entire island of Britain. The way 
was opened, as in the case of Wales, by a call for a more definite 
interpretation of the shadowy claims which English kings had from 
time to time asserted over the kings of Scotland. Edward was a 
legalist by disposition, inclined always to insist upon his technical 
rights, and without that finer sense of justice so marked in Louis 
IX. which made the rights of others ever as sacred as his own. 
Edward, moreover, was in possession of all the vast resources of the 
newly harmonized state, and, fully conscious of his strength, he was 
the last man to allow a mere question of metes and bounds to go 
long unsettled. 

In the thirteenth century the Scots were a rising people. 
Goidel, Briton, Norse, and English were at last merging into a sin- 
gle kingdom. The relation of their kings to the English 
kimdom^^'' ^ourt was necessarily intimate. They had frequently 
intermarried with the English royal house; had held 
lands south of the border as vassals of the English king, and as 
English barons had not hesitated to take part in his quarrels. 
They had also, even before the Norman Conquest, recognized in 
the English king a vague right of overlordship over the Scottish 
kingdom. Henry II. had brushed away all technical difficulties in 
the treaty of Falaise, by which he had compelled William the 
Lion, who was then his prisoner, to become his liegeman for Scot- 
land and all his other lands. But fifteen years later, for a pay- 
ment of 10,000 marks, Eichard had restored to the King of Scots 
the border castles which Henry had retained as security, and released 
him and his heirs forever from the homage promised for Scotland. 



324 THE NEW ERA [ Edward l. 

The later English kings, however, had not regarded the matter as 
finally adjusted, and although, in the century following, the royal 
families of the two countries had remained upon more or less 
friendly terms, they had more than once raised the question of 
overlordship. 

In 1286 Alexander III. died. His daughter Margaret had mar- 
ried Eric King of Norway, and their daughter, known as the 
"Maid of Norway," was the sole descendant of Alex- 
nuccc^sUnC ander. The claims of the little granddaughter, also a 

1286-1292. . & & ' 

Margaret, were recognized by the Scots. Edward saw 
at once the opportunity for a peaceful settlement of the unadjusted 
claims of the English crown, and proposed the marriage of Mar- 
garet to his own son, Edward of Carnarvon, then a lad about 
Margaret's age. The Scottish nobles were not averse to a union so 
much in accord with recent traditions of both kingdoms^ and so 
promising in many mutual advantages. It was stipulated, how- 
ever, by the Scottish estates that the kingdom of Scotland should 
remain separate with its own laws and customs. These conditions 

were formally accepted by Edward at Brigham. But 

The treaty of j i. j o 

Brigham, unfortunately the little Maid of Norway did not sur- 

1290. 

vive to reach England, and the fine plan of Edward, 
which would have brought England and Scotland under one crown 
three centuries before the time of James Stuart, was blasted in the 
bud. 

A swarm of claimants for the vacant throne now sprang up. 
A definite law of succession had never been clearly established in 

Scotland, but the superior importance was generally 

The judciment j. i. o ., 

of Edivard, recognized of claims based on descent from David, the 

1292. 

earl of Huntingdon, a younger brother of William the 
Lion, and a contemporary of Henry II. and his two immediate 
successors. Unfortunately, however, the earl of Huntingdon was 
represented by three male descendants : John Balliol, Eobert Bruce, 
and John Hastings. Of these John Balliol was the grandson of 
Margaret, the eldest daughter of David; John Hastings, the lord 
of Abergavenny, was the grandson of a third daughter; but Bruce 

^ Edward's sister Margaret had been the wife of Alexander HI- ; his 
aunt Joan the wife of Alexander II. 



1291, 1392] THE JUDGMENT OF EDWARD 325 

was the son of a second danghter and so a degree nearer to David 
than either. According to the custom of feudal inheritances, 
when the holder left daughters only, the fief was divided equally 
among them as co-heiresses. Hastings claimed that the law 
should be applied in this case, and that heirs of David's daughters 
should share the kingdom equally. Bruce and Balliol, however, 
advanced each his right to the whole kingdom; based, the one 
upon his nearer descent from David, and the other upon the fact 
that he represented the eldest line. In the absence of precedent, 
one claim was probably as valid as another. All tliree of the 
claimants were more English than Scotch in feeling; they had also 
borne their part in English polit'ics, Bruce having been chief justice 
of the King's Bench. The contestants, therefore, naturally 
appealed to Edward, and in the long existing confidence which 
had prevailed between the two courts, felt no hesitation in recog- 
nizing him as overlord. In 1291 Edward invited the nobles of 
Scotland to meet him at Norham, but before he would act as arbi- 
trator he insisted upon a formal recognition of his position as 
superior lord of the Scottish realm. Accordingly he received the 
homage of the Scots, and with the aid of the court lawyers pro- 
ceeded to examine the case with care and deliberation. The 
decision was not rendered until the next year, when both Bruce 
and Hastings were set aside and the kingdom, undivided, was 
awarded to John Balliol. Balliol straightway did homage to 
Edward for the kingdom and was crowned. All parties apparently 
were satisfied with the result. 

To Edward, however, the recognition of overlordship meant 
more than a public acknowledgment of preeminence in rank. 

Arguing from the well-established relations of his own 
of^wsdictum a^^thority in Aquitaine to his French overlord, he held 
fouris^^'^^^ that it was his right to hear appeals from the highest 

court in Scotland, and, the very first year of John Bal- 
liol's reign, when four Scottish suitors appealed to Edward against 
the decision of the Scottish courts he seized the opportunity to 
put his claim to the test, and summoned King John to appear at 
Westminster to answer the complaint of his aggrieved subjects. 
Here certainly was innovation; an application of feudal theory 



326 THE NEW ERA [edward i. 

which the high-spirited Scottish nobles were by no means inclined 
to accept. And although Balliol went to Westminster and pro- 
tested in person against the usurpation of Edward, his movements 
were altogether too sluggish to satisfy the fiery spirits whom he 
had left at home. His motives were suspected, and in 1295 the 
nobles took the administration out of his hands altogether and put 
it in the hands of a commission, in some such way as the English 
nobles had assumed control of the government of Henry III. 

Edward, however, was by no means free, either to support his 

vassal king, or to intimidate his turbulent rear vassals of Scotland. 

Philip IV,, a very different man from the just and 

CompHcation pacific Louis, was now upon the throne of France; 
ivith France. ^ ' ^ _ 

ambitious, treacherous, and full of guile, he only waited 
an ojjportunity to complete the work of Philip II., by shaking the 
English from their last hold on the Garonne. A special oppor- 
tunity for making mischief, moreover, had been oiJered by the 
chronic hostility of the Norman and Gascon sailors. The distinc- 
tions between lawful trade and piracy were hardly as yet under- 
stood, and the wine ships coming from Gascony to England were 
the favorite prey of the Norman ship-masters. The Cinque Ports, 
the great trading towns of southern England, naturally took the 
part of the Gascons. Eeprisals were made on both sides, and in 
1293 the affair came to a head in a great sea fight in the harbor of 
St. Mahe in Brittany, in which a fleet of Normans, 
st.Mahe, Flemings, and French, engaged a fleet of English, Gas- 
cons, and Irish. The Normans and their allies were 
completely overwhelmed, their ships sunk, and fifteen thousand 
lives sacrificed. Philip naturally was not inclined to let such a 
serious matter pass unnoticed, and at once summoned Edward as 
duke of Aquitaine to appear in the French court and answer for 
the conduct of his Gascons. Edward neglected the summons, and 
Philip declared his duchy forfeited. Ordinarily such a decision 
would mean war, but Edward, warned by the growing restlessness 
of the Scots, was not ready to plunge into a conflict with Philip. 
He, therefore, sent over his brother Edmund, the earl of Lancas- 
ter, to represent him and do what he could by negotiation. Philip 
was gracious and suave, and tricked Edmund into believing that 



1296] FIRST SCOTTISH WAR OF EDWARD 327 

all he sought was some formal recognition of his authority, 
persuading him to hand over the castles of Guienne to be held for 
forty days and then returned again. But when the forty days 
were up, Philip canceled the agreement with Edmund, poured his 
troops into the Gascon country and entered into an active alliance 
with the Scots. 

Edward could not refuse the challenge and prepared for war. 

The usual Welsh outbreaks hel|)ed to rouse popular sentiment, and 

when in 1295 Edward summoned his famous Model 

The first Parliament to consider the difficulties which confronted 

Scottish IT ar 

jL?^"'""'' ^^^1 the nation responded with an alacrity and una- 
nimity never before known in English history; the 
burghers outdoing the nobles and the clergy in generous response 
to the king's call for money. Edmund of Lancaster was dis- 
patched to the Garonne, while Edward in person led an army into 
Scotland and summoned Balliol to appear before him. But instead 
of presenting himself, the unhappy king sent to Edward at New- 
castle a formal renunciation of the homage which he had sworn in 
1292. "The false fool," cried Edward, "if he will not come to us, 
we will go to him." Berwick fell in March. In April, Earl 
Warenne who commanded the English advance, defeated the Scots 
on the plain before Dunbar. Then followed in quick succession 
the surrender of Dunbar, Eoxburgh, Edinburgh, and Stirling. 
Finally the surrender of Balliol completed the speedy and unex- 
pected triumph. Edward continued his march through the 
Lowlands, receiving the keys of the Scottish strongholds and 
admitting the nobles to homage. He made Earl Warenne guard- 
ian and then returned to England, taking with him to Westmin- 
ster the famous stone of Scone, the traditional coronation stone of 
Scottish kings. 

Edward's triumph apparently was final. Scotland lay under 
his feet, prostrate, destitute; her strongholds held by English 
garrisons, her dethroned king a captive in a foreign prison.^ Yet 
Edward had hardly turned his attention to France when disquieting 
rumors began to reach him from his new conquest. Earl Warenne, 

^ Balliol was confined for a while in the Tower of London and then 
allowed to depart for the continent where he finally died in obscurity. 



328 THE NEW ERA [edward I. 

although guardian of the realm, had turnsd the administration over 

to two men, Cressingham the treasurer, and Ormesby the justiciar, 

who were utterly incapable of understanding the Scot- 

Popuiarris- n^i^ people; nor was it long before the discontent 

i7ig -under , r i ' o 

7997""''^' aroused by their petty tyrannies passed into widespread 
revolt, and the Highlands far and near blazed with 
the fires of a bloody guerrilla warfare. The wild mountain glens 
and dreary upland moors offered a safe hiding to desperate outlaws. 
Here they gathered in ever increasing numbers, finding leaders 
among those who had felt the hand of the tyrants and lived only 
for vengeance. All other leaders, however, sank into shadow by 
the side of the famous Wallace, whose daring and energy awed and 
terrified the English, as it inspired and heartened his own people. 
Edward was absent in Flanders. The absentee guardian of Scot- 
land roused himself and entering the country with a great army 
approached Stirling. At Cambuskenneth a long bridge 

netii, Septem- spanned the -borth, so narrow that onlv two mounted 
ber, 1297. . 

men could cross it abreast. Beyond the bridge a range 

of low hills reached almost to the water's edge. It was just such 
a spot as Wallace and his desperate band of outlaws knew how to 
make the most of. The southern army approached the bridge and 
began the long and tedious crossing. Five thousand men under 
the hated Cressingham Avere already on the other bank when the 
Scots led by Wallace and Sir Andrew Murray rushed upon them. 
The slaughter was frightful; Cressingham was slain and his fol- 
lowers butchered almost to a man. The main body of the English 
retired. The news of the victory electrified the prostrate nation; 
the lukewarm and the cautious hesitated no longer; everywhere 
the Scots rose and the English garrisons fied for their lives. Scot- 
land was now again in the hands of her own people, and a provi- 
sional government was organized under Wallace and Murray, who 
assumed the title of "Generals of the Army of the Kingdom of 
Scotland and Guardians of the Kealm for King John." 

Edward saw that if he would save Scotland, he must return at 
once, and strangely enough Philip consented to a truce and left 
Edward free to devote all his splendid energy and skill to the 
recovery of Scotland. Wallace's tactics were simple and would 



1398] FALKIRK 329 

have succeeded, had he dealt with a less able general. The Low- 
lands were harried by his orders and nothing was left that might 
feed an invading army. The English were sore put to 
cnmmimfof ^^ ^'^^^ food, and a disgraceful retreat, which must have 
Edward, 1298. i,QQYi final, seemed unavoidable, when Edward by 
one of those brilliant movements which mark the great 
general, suddenly confronted Wallace in Falkirk wood and com- 
pelled him to fight against his will. 

The battle is interesting because it illustrates the rapid progress 
which the English were making in the art of war, soon to give 
them such superiority in the approaching struggle with 
Fn77rir7f, France. Wallace had hardly any cavalry, for the Scot- 
tish nobles had not taken kindly to the man of the 
people. They suspected his motives also and feared the results of 
his rapid successes. Wallace, therefore, was compelled to depend 
almost altogether upon his pikemen. These, however, he drew 
up with real skill behind a marsh, so arranged that they formed 
four squares, or circles rather, connected by a line of archers. In 
the rear he posted his few horsemen, Edward saw that his heavy 
armed knights were useless against such a formation, and resorted 
to the tactics which his great ancestor had used at Hastings, and 
with similar success. The English had of late begun to develop 
the long bow, which in the Welsh wars of Edward had proved its 
superiority to the old short bow or the cross bow. The archer, by 
the greater length of the bow and weight of his arrow, was able to 
throw the entire strength of his body into the shaft, drawing the 
bolt to the ear instead of the breast, and sending it with such 
force that it could pierce armor or shield. Edward had brought 
with him a body of archers skilled in the use of this terrible 
weapon. He now ordered them into action and had them concen- 
trate their fire upon the Scottish squares. The pikemen, mad- 
dened by the swiftly flying shafts but unable to protect them- 
selves by reason of their close formation, were soon thrown into 
confusion; then a well-timed charge of the English cavalry into 
the struggling mass of men and tall spears, and Falkirk was won. 
Wallace's power melted away as rapidly as it had arisen. He 
escaped from Falkirk to spend the next six years in hiding; but 



330 THE N"EW ERA [edward I. 

was finally betrayed by the Scots themselves, delivered over to 
Edward and put to death as a traitor. The people, however, 

would not forget him. He became the hero of the 
of Wallace's struggle for independence. Even the well-earned 

fame of the younger Bruce paled before the favor- 
ite of legend and song, the first among Scottish national 
patriots. 

Although Wallace had been routed and his power dispelled, it 
took Edward six years to recover the lost ground. He had made 

an alliance with Flanders against France, but the alli- 
tumTinfiT''"'' ^^'^'^^ proved expensive and unsatisfactory. The money 
Famrk""^^^ which the English estates had so generously voted him 

in 1295 had been expended, and yet had secured no 
adequate results. The towns were restless under later exactions; 
the church disobedient and the barons defiant. The pope, Boni- 
face VIIL, also embarrassed the king by putting forth a claim as 
overlord of Scotland and forbade him to interfere further with the 
Scots. New leaders also came forward to carry on the work of 
Wallace. In 1302 John Comyn, a nephew of Balliol, supported by 
the bishoji of St. Andrews, won the important battle of Roslin and 
for the moment delivered Scotland nortli of the Forth. Ordinary 
difficulties, however, did not discourage Edward. In 1301 he had 
again confirmed the charters and in return secured the promise of 
the English barons to defend his claim to Scotland against the 
threatened intervention of the pope. But fortunately the rival 
claim of Boniface was never brought to an issue; nor is it likely 
that he meant to do more than assert his position as guardian 
of the peace of Europe. At all events he was soon able to give 
proof of the genuineness of his desire for peace by securing an 
agreement between Edward and Philip, in accordance with which 
Philip restored Gascony, and Edward, .whose first wife had died in 
1290, married Philip's sister; the Prince of Wales was also 
betrothed to Philip's daughter Isabella. By this double marriage 
it was hoped to assure the friendly relations of the two courts for 
many years to come; a fatuous hope, for it was through the mar- 
riage of Prince Edward and Isabella that English kings came 
subsequently to lay claim to the throne of France. 



1304-1307] RISING OF BEUCE 331 

The Scottish barons, now that they were deserted by Philip, 
felt the uselessness of continuing the straggle. At Dumfries, 
Comyn, who had been acting as King John's regent, 
Sfeto™"^ ^^^ Edward and agreed to a peace on condition that 
in^^Scoaand, -j^j^g Scottish barons should not be deprived of their 
lands, but should be allowed to redeem them by the 
payment of a fine. In 1304 Stirling fell and all armed resistance 
ceased. In the meantime Edward was maturing plans for the 
settlement of the kingdom, and a really good scheme was struck 
out. But he was to meet the common experience of most ambitious 
sovereigns who attempt to foist a foreign government upon a high- 
spirited and warlike iDeople against their will. The temjDorary 
successes of Wallace, followed by the glorious but ineffectual strug- 
gle carried on by Andrew Murray and John Comyn, had appealed 
powerfully to national sentiment and the people only waited for a 
new leader. 

This leader appeared in the young Eobert Bruce, grandson of 
that Eobert Bruce who had been Balliol's rival. Hitherto he had 
been on the English side and high in favor with Edward, 
Bruce, 1306. ^^^^° ^^^"^ trusted him and consulted him upon the reor- 
ganization of the country. But in 1306 in an interview 
at Dumfries with Comyn who was heir to Balliol's claims, hot 
words had arisen between the two men, swords had been drawn, and 
Comyn was slain. Bruce, an outlaw and a murderer, had then fled 
to the mountains of Galloway, and, apparently in self-defense, had 
raised the standard of revolt. In March 1306 he was able to make 
his way to Scone and secure a coronation. 

Edward heard of the new revolt, and roused himself to crush 
it. Apparently it was not a very serious matter, and Aymer de 
Valence, Edward's nephew, easily drove Bruce into the 
paignlf/^^' Western islands for refuge. But Edward was now well 
Bdward, ggj^^g [y^ years, and infirmity was fast creeping upon him. 
His wrath was as terrible to onlookers as ever; but the 
lightnings had lost their power to blast. He hurried on after his 
armies, but crippled by his years he was no match for the young 
and energetic Bruce whose rapid movements easily eluded the pur- 
suit of the king's lieutenants and enabled him to strike again 



332 THE NEW ERA 

where least expected. Edward fumed and stormed and vented his 
wrath upon the Inckless Scottish nobles who fell into his power. 
They were put to death without mercy ; their estates confiscated 
and turned over to Englishmen. The Countess of Buchan, who 
had placed the crown upon Brnce's head, was put in an iron cage 
and hang from the walls of Berwick castle. The efforts of 
Edward, however, only added fuel to the insurrection. The war 
took on more and more the character of a national rising, and iii 

1307 Bruce was able to take the field at the head of a 
wariijujij considerable force. The old kiag, brokea by fifty years 

of service, rose from his bed to put himself at the head 
of his troops as of yore; but the effort was too much for his fail- 
ing strengtli. He died at Burgh-on-the-Sands, July 7, 1307. 

So died the great Edward; lawgiver, statesman, soldier, and 
king. The closing years of his long and brilliant reign, clouded by 

his unfortunate attempt to make good his lordship over 

G"V&ctf'Ti€SS oi^ 

Edward's Scotland, must not obscure the real greatness of the 
man or the success of his fifty years of administration. 
His father had made a pitiful failure and had been saved from utter 
ruin only by the cool determination of the barons and the wise 
leadership of the son. AYhen Henry died all strife had ended, and 
Edward, as no Norman or Plantagenet before him, succeeded to a 
peaceful and united realm. Of this harmony he made the most. 
He fully grasped the elements of the problem before him ; accepted 
the results of the barons' wars; kept himself in touch with the 
national sentiment of the age, and sought not to check, but to 
direct the efforts by which the nation was seeking to secure better 
laws and a wiser service. Once he seemed to waver in his allegi- 
ance to the cause of constitutional government, when for the 
moment the pressure of unsuccessful foreign war had blinded him 
to the possible results of his actions; but it is this very incident, 
connected with the names of Bigod and Bohun, that reveals the 
real greatness of Edward, — the infinite distance which separates 
him from John Lackland or Henry III. for Edward was man 
enough, when once he saw his mistake, to confess his error and 
right the wrong. The attempt to conquer Scotland, however, was 
more than a mistake of policy; it was a political crime, and bit- 



GREATNESS OF EDWARD 



333 



terly Edward paid the penalty in the humiliation of failure which 
shadowed his last days and in the fatal debt with which he fettered 
the reign of his unfortunate son. Yet the attempt to conquer the 
northern kingdom was not the outcome of mere vulgar hunger for 
military glory; Edward simply tried to make real and practical his 
right as overlord, just as every other great national king in the 
west was then doing. It is remarkable, however, that one who 
had such keen appreciation of the significance of national senti- 
ment in England, should have so little perception of its strength 
in other lands. 



KINGS OF FRANCE 

Philip III., d. 1285. 
Philip IV. 



CONTEMPORARIES OF EDWARD I. 

1272-1307 



EMPERORS 

Rudolph of Haps- 

burg, d. 1291. 
Adolplius, d. 1298. 
Albert. 



KINGS OF CASTILE 

Ali)honso X., the Wise, 

d. 1284. 
Sancho IV., the Great, 

d. 1395. 
Ferdinand IV. 



KINGS OF SCOT- 
LAND 

Alexander III., d. 

1286. 
John Balliol, 7c. 

1292-1296. 
Robert I., k. 1306. 



PROMINENT POPES 

Gregory X., 1271-1276. 
Nicolas III., 1277-1281. 
Martin IV., 1281-1285. 
Honorius IV., 1285-1289. 
Nicolas IV., 1289-1292. 
Boniface. VIII., 1294-1303. 
]5enedictXI., 1303-1305. 
Clement v., 1305. 



ARCHBISHOPS OF 
CANTERBURY 

Robert Kilwardby, 1273- 

1278. 
John Peckham, 1279-1292. 
Robert Winchelsey, 1294. 



FAMOUS MEN 

(Not princes) 
Roger Bacon, d. 1272. 
Dante Alighieri, h. 1265, d. 

1321. 
Wihiam Wallace, &. 1274{ ?) 

d. 1305. 
Marco Polo, b, 1254, d. 1324. 



CHAPTEE II 

THE BAROKS AND THE ROYAL FAVORITES. THE INDEPENDENCE 
OF SCOTLAND ESTABLISHED 

. EDWARD 11., 1307-1327 

THE HOUSE OF LANCASTER 

Ednnind, Earl of Lancaster, 
brother of Edward I. 

\ 



Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, Henry, Earl of Lancaster, 

d. 1333 I d. 1345 

Henry, first Duke of Lancaster 

Blanche m. John of Gaunt, 
fourth son of Edward III. 

The new king, Edward of Carnarvon, was a failure from the 

first. He was frivolous, unprincipled, and utterly incapable of 

handling the questions which his father's death had left 

wrainicsfi of unsettled. He tied himself to a contemptible favorite 

till iicii' king. i 

tora'*'^'""^**' ^^ ^''^ boyhood, a Gascon by the name of Piers Gaveston, 
who encouraged him in dissipation and costly extrav- 
agance, and used his influence for his own ends. The foreign 
birth of Gaveston, his rapid elevation, his worthlessness, roused 
the enmity of the baronage, and at once created a powerful anti- 
administration party among the nobility as in the days of the for- 
eign favorites of Henry III. 

The most bitter and dangerous opponent of Gaveston was the 
king's cousin, Thomas Earl of Lancaster, the son of Edmund 
Crouchback, the once titular king of Sicily. Earl 
Lariraster's Thomas held the lordship of five earldoms, controlled 
a'aveston' enomious wealth, and possessed great personal influence. 
He had resented the insolent ways of the upstart Gaves- 
ton and had smarted under the lashing of his sharp tongue; for 
Gaveston rather prided himself on his wit, and took a silly delight 
in fixing various nicknames upon the prominent members of the 

334 



1308] PIERS GAVESTON 335 

court. Thus Lancaster he had dubbed "The Hog;" Pembroke, 
"Joseph the Jew;" Gloucester, "The Cuckoo;" aud Warwick, 
"The Black Dog of Arden." It was fine fun no doubt for Gaves- 
ton and his admirers, but dangerous. 

In 1308 Edward returned from France with his bride Isabella, 
and held the ceremony of coronation with great magnificence. He 

made the usual promises to maintain the customs of the 
Gnveston, realm and respect its laws. But the frivolous and 

insincere nature of the king was so well understood, and 
the continued affront of Gaveston's presence, his reckless insolence, 
was such a constant challenge to the barons, that the most sanguine 
could not fail to see that trouble was at hand ; nor was it long 
before the storm broke. At a great council held soon after the 
coronation, the barons insisted upon the expulsion of the favorite 
from the kingdom, and Edward was forced to yield. 

The barons, however, had only begun their work. Earl 
Thomas imagined that he was destined to play the role of a second 

Montfort; and the next year, in a full parliament in 
as^a\-ef(yrmer ^^^^icli the commons were represented, he persuaded the 

Estates to refuse to vote any supplies, unless the king 
consented to redress certain grievances, as unjust seizures of 
provisions by the king's officers under the name of purveyance, 
excessive duties on wines, cloth, and other imports, irreguhir 
coinage, and similar abuses, particularly grievous to the merchant 
classes. The king had banished Gaveston as he had agreed, but 
he had sent him off loaded with gifts to the governorship of 
Ireland. He now offered to grant the reforms provided the favor- 
ite might be allowed to return to the kingdom. The barons, how- 
ever, were in no mood to be gracious and refused their consent. 
Then Edward undertook to gain his point by coaxing, wheedling, 
and bribery, and although the body of the barons were still stub- 
born, thinking he had support enough to act without their consent, 
he recalled his man. It was a fatal step for both king and 
minister. 

The king again drifted into his old ways of living; and Gaves- 
ton, looking upon his recall as a triumph, became more irritating 
than ever. When the barons assembled the next year, they came 



336 THE BARONS AND THE FAVORITES. [edwaxd 11. 

with the grim determination to take the government out of the 
hands of the king who could so soon forget his promises. A com- 
mittee of administration was appointed of twenty-one barons, 
known as "Lords Ordainers;" inchiding, beside the 
^ave^mf^^^ archbishop Wiuchelsey, Lancaster, Pembroke, War- 
wick, and Gloucester; all of whom had felt the lash 
of Gaveston's tongue, and with the exception of Winch elsey, were 
moved more by hatred of the favorite than by any intel- 
OrOamers," ligent devotion to the cause of pure government. They 
were specially commissioned to reform existing abuses 
and to regulate the king's household. The report of the Lords 
Ordainers, known as the "Ordinances," consisted of forty -one 
articles, and dealt with current abuses, some of which were as old 
as Magna Charta. Of chief importance, however, were the excess- 
ive duties which had prevailed since the beginning of the Scot- 
tish wars. The Lord's Ordainers fixed the duties of the year 
1275 as standard. They directed also that Gaveston be per- 
manently banished, and forbade the king to appoint ministers, 
go to war, or leave the kingdom without the approval of the 
barons. 

Edward, cowed and humbled, signed the Ordinances, but 
entreated the barons to save his "brother Piers." He then went 
north, where the rising power of Bruce liad long since 
nanceti demanded attention. Here he no sooiier found him- 

self out from under the shadow of the Lords Ordain- 
ers, than he defied the Ordinances and called his favorite to his 
side. This new evidence of the bad faith of the king was too 
much for the temper of the barons. They appealed at 
Murder of ^^gg to arms, took Gaveston at Scarborough and sent 

Gaveston. ' " 

him to Wallingford under the pledge of the earl of 
Pembroke to present him at the meeting of parliament. But 
such fiery spirits as Warwick, Lancaster, Hereford, and Arundel, 
were too impatient to await a trial, and had the favorite seized on 
the way to Wallingford and hurried off to Warwick Castle. Here 
he was brought into the presence of his foes and his fate decided. 
It would not do to let the fox go, they said; they would only have 
to hunt him again. 



1311-1313] SUCCESSES OF BRUCE 337 

The murder of Gaveston was prophetic of the era at hand. It 
was a now thing for politicians to butcher their fallen rivals. 

From this time until the reign of Henry A"II., politics 
ciwracter becomes more and more a bloody trade. Feuds were 
vouiics^^^ started which were not to be allayed until many of the 

finest families of England had perished. It was the hot 
breath of the new era; the natural effect of continual war, 
of the factitious life bred of chivalry, and of the decay of per- 
sonal piety. The unhappy king was powerless to punish; he 
had to content himself with receiving the feigned submission 
of the men who had slain his favorite, and proclaim a general 
amnesty. 

The troubles of Edward with his barons, the generally crip- 
pled condition of the government, will explain why so little had yet 

been done to repress Bruce. The great strongholds of 

Bn^t^The *^ ^ ^*^^^ ^'^^^ ' ^^^^ ^^^'g^^ ' ^' ^^^ithgo w , Perth , Edin bu rgh , 
fammsyear ^nd Stirling, still remained in English hands, but Bruce 
was everywhere master of the open country. Moreover, 
as the weakness of the English became more apparent, the hopes 
of the Scots rose correspondingly; their daring also increased to 
such an extent that they answered Edward's invasion of 1311 by a 
counter raid into the northern counties of England, and in 1312 
Bruce began the systematic reduction of the English strongholds. 
It was a great year in Scottish story. In January Bruce car- 
ried the battlements of Perth by assault; Roxburgh surrendered 
in March ; seven days later, Randolph, a son of Bruce's sister, 
led a band of thirty men up the frowning cliff on whose crest 
rises tlie huge keep of Edinburgh Castle, scaled its ramparts, and 
took tlie garrison by surprise, — one of the most brilliant and dar- 
ing enterprises of all history. A brilliant strategy at the same 
time secured Linlithgow. A countryman, with the good Scotch 
name of Binnie, approached the gates on a bright morning with an 
innocent looking load of hay. Under the portcullis the load 
stopped and a band of sturdy Scotchmen, sword in hand, springing 
out from under the hay, held the gate until their comrades could 
rush in aad overpower the garrison. By the opening of the next 
year, only Stirling held out. The garrison were sore pressed and 



338 



THE BARONS AND THE FAVORITES 



I Edward II. 



Philip Mowbray, the governor, agreed to surrender, if they were 
not relieved before June 24, 1314. 

Edward had time enough to relieve the town and was in fact 

deeply stirred by the new responsibility which the conditions 

accepted by Mowbray imposed upon him. But he was 

Attempt to ^ •'^ . rr,, 

relieve stir- no longer his own master. ihe barons were not 

inclined to trust him with a large army. The months of 

grace slipped by. The king urged and jjleaded. Still Lancaster and 

his men held 




aloof; yet as 
the last days 
approached, 
they were 
apparently 
shamed out of 
their sulky 
mood and al- 
lowed EdR^ard 
to act. He 
came within 
sight of Stirl- 
ing on the 23d 
of June, one 
day before the 
time fijed for 
M wbr ay 's 
surrender. 
Brace had 
drawn up his men behind the Bannockburn in order to 
command the roads to Stirling. His position was one of 
great natural strength. A marsh protected Lis right 
wing, while his left was covered by low ground, filled 
here and there with pools of water. Wherfver there 
was a chance for horsemen to secure a footing, he had also dug 
pits and concealed them with hurdles. The formation of Bruce 
was similar to that adopted by Wallace at Falkirk, but ])ack of his 
bristling circles he had a powerful body of cavalry in reserve. For 



Bamnnclt- 
Imrn, 1314. 



1314] BANISrOCKBUEN" 339 

in the seven years which had followed the death of Edward I. , Bruce 
had won to his side all the discontented elements of the population, 
and the younger nobility in particular had rallied to his support. 
The English commanders showed little skill in marshalling their 
men. The men showed little confidence in their leaders. Edward 
opened the battle by sending forward his archers; his plan being 
first to riddle the Scottish array, and then hurl forward his heavy 
cavalry as his father had done at Falkirk. But unfortunately he 
allowed the archers to advance so far that the English horse could 
not support them, and a well-timed charge by Bruce's horse from 
the flank swept them from the field. Edward then sent forward 
his horse, but the Scottish knights had recovered their position and 
the English knights found only the dense array of spearmen to 
receive them. In vain they hurled themselves upon the forest of 
pikes. Their splendid courage only increased" the confusion and 
slaughter. Then suddenly, appearing above the high ground in the 
rear of the Scots, the English caught the glitter of arms and the 
waving of banners of a second army approaching. It was only 
the camp followers of Bruce, his sutlers and cattle herders, 
tricked out for the occasion, but the sight was too much for the 
shattered nerves of the English leaders. They fully believed that 
a second army was about to enter the field in support of the 
Scots, and thought only of flight. The Scottish horse dashed 
in among the mass of struggling fugitives and began a ruthless 
slaughter. The earl of Gloucester was slain ; Hereford was taken 
at Bothwell, and the king with great difficulty got away to Dun- 
bar, and finally to Berwick. 

Edward had left many of his barons and knights on the field of 
Banuockbnrn; yet for the moment he talked wildly of summoning 

a new army and renewing the war. It was evident to 
onheScoS^^ Edward's advisers, however, that the country was 

utterly disheartened; that no one had confidence either 
in the king's ability or his courage, and that a second attempt 
would only invite fresh disaster. Yet no one dared to propose 
peace while the disgrace of Baunockburn rankled in the public 
mind. The king also was obstinate in his determination to regard 
Bruce as a rebel, and persisted in refusing to listen to any of his 



340 THE BAEONS AND THE FAVORITES [kdward il. 

overtures. Bruce on his part fully appreciated the significance of 
his victory, and was more than ever determined to compel the 
English to recognize the independence wliicli he had now won. 
He had already seized the Isle of Man and in 1315 
SaMin"^ allowed his brother David to enter upon the ill-starred 
Si?""*' attempt to wrest Ireland from the English. In 1316 

Bruce himself went over to assist his brother, but soon 
became satisfied that the place to strike England successfully was 
not in Ireland but upon his own border. Soon after his return, 
therefore, he began the systematic harrying of the northern 
shires. The capture of Berwick opened the eastern highway into 
England, and every harvest time saw the Scots in the saddle, 
and the English farmers fleeing for their lives ; their hay ricks and 
granaries going up in flames; their cattle gracing the homeward 
march of the Scots.' In a single raid the Scots burned Scarborough, 
Northallerton, Boroughbridge, and Skipton. In 1319 the York- 
shire farmers, led by their priests in their white surplices, attempted 
to make a stand at Myton, but the simple peasantry fled at the 
first rush of Eandolph's men-at-arms. They were cut down like 
sheep. So many of the clergy were slain that the bat- 
ofMvton'^'^^ ^^® ^^' ^'^^^^®^' massacre was known as the "Chapter of 
Myton." Still Edward refused to recognize Robert 
Bruce as king of Scotland. In 1322 he again attempted to invade 
the country but only to bring the Scots to the gates of York for 
his pains. It was more than ever evident that nothing was to be 
gained by further war, and in 1323 Edward prudently determined 
to unload part of his trouble by giving peace to the northern bor- 
ders. The truce was to last, thirteen years, Bruce in the mean- 
time to take the title of king. But upon the accession of 
Edward III., four years later, Bruce seized the opjDortunity to 
force upon England a full recognition of his claims and the accept- 
ance of a permanent peace. The treaty was signed at 
Northdmp- Northampton in 1328. England formally recognized 
Bruce as king of Scotland and renounced all claims to 
the Scottish overlordship. So at last, for the time, ended the strug- 
gle for Scottish independence. It had cost much ; but it was worth 
it all. The Scottish nation had come out of the fires a great peo- 



1314-1318] THOMAS OF LANCASTER 341 

pie. They had learned self-reliance ; they had learned to think and 
act for themselves ; they had learned that they were Scotchmen. 
Above all they had received a priceless heritage in the memory of 
great names and heroic deeds, the true soil of patriotism. 

Edward in the meantime was steadily sinking in the pit of his 
own digging. He had fled from Bannockbnrn with a troop of 
furious Scotchmen at his heels, and a brave and warlike 
E^mmii'i People coiild not forgive their king for missing this rare 
chance of dying like a hero. Even the royal title could 
no longer impart dignity to a character so contemptible. Lancas- 
ter became the dominant spirit both at the council board and in 
the army. He removed old ministers and appointed new ones at 
will. He fixed an allowance for the king's expenses and deter- 
mined his personal friends. He was commander-in-chief of the 
army. He became president of the council. But unfortunately 
he proved as incompetent in administration as he had been unscru- 
pulous and violent in opposition. The baronage would not endure 
his despotic ways; they broke up into rival factions, and turning 
their arms against each other, left the Scots to plunder and ravage 
the north as they pleased. A serious failure of the harvest added 
to the distress caused by domestic anarchy and foreign war, and 
the people were not slow to charge the government with their 
misfortunes. Men whispered that Earl Thomas had entered into 
a secret league with the Scots and had agreed for a price not to 
molest the enemy in the plunder of English fields and the slaughter 
of English burghers. In their despair the hearts of the j)eople 
turned again to their young king. Affairs had gone better when 
he was left free to bring whom he would into his council chamber. 
Even Gaveston had managed things better than this. So the bal- 
ance began to shift again and Edward's chance of once more con- 
trolling his government began to mend. With the fall 

131S. t) & t> 

of Berwick and the failure of the attemj)t to recover it 
the next year, only the poor shreds of Thomas's former influence 
remained. 

Two new men now became prominent among the rival factions 
of the baronage and, by making tlie cause of the despised king their 
own, secured a marked advantage over their fellows. These men 



342 THE BAEONS AND THE FAVORITES [edward II. 

were the Despensers, father and son. Unlike tlie fallen Gaveston, 
they represented one of the fine old Norman English families of 

the baronage, which for generations had been closely 
pms^-f identified with the political history of the conntry. 

Hugh le Despenser the elder was the son of the Hugh le 
Despenser who had been jnsticiar under Earl Simon and had 
fallen l)y his side at Evesham. The son had regained the royal 
confidence during the reign of Edward I., and had occupied an 
important place among his ministers; he had since adhered to the 
second Edward and had supported him heretofore through all his 
troubles. Earl Thomas hated the man and held him as his per- 
sonal enemy, while the barons affected to regard him as a traitor 
to their cause. The son, Hugh le Despenser the third, was nearer 
the king's age; ambitious, avaricious, and not overscrupulous as to 
the means employed to gain his ends. He had married a sister of 
the earl of Gloucester, and after in's death at Bannockburn had come 
in for a third of his estates, becoming thus by right of his wife one 
of the richest lords of England. In the new government organized 
after the fall of Berwick, he had been made chamberlain, and was 
thus brought into direct personal relations to the king, nor had 
he hesitated to take advantage of the enforced loneliness and iso- 
lation of the unhappy man to worm his way into the place of con- 
fidence once held by the fallen Gaveston. 

Of the unscrupulous greed of the Despensers there can be little 
doubt. It is not unlikely, however, that some of the principles 

adopted by the old popular party of Earl Simon's day 

tiie'iJespciis- had descended with the family traditions, and that the 
erg, 1821. 1 T-> • • 

later Despensers justified their ambitions, to themselves 

at least, in the avowed purpose of securing a more distinct recog- 
nition of the political rights of the nation as a whole, by over- 
throwing the personal rule of Earl Thomas and setting up in its 
stead a more direct control of the royal council by the parliament. 
At all events some of the maxims ascribed to the younger Hugh 
reveal a grasp of the principles of constitutional government far 
in advance of his age. One element, however, the Despensers had 
not fully considered ; and that was the latent hostility of the nation 
to the royal favorite, in whatsoever guise he might appear. Earl 



1321, 1322] THE FALL OF EARL THOMAS 343 

Thomas and his friends, therefore, found little difficuTty in appeal- 
ing to this deep-seated prejudice, and persuaded even the luke- 
warm that a new Gaveston had arisen in the younger Hugh, So 
great had become the unpopularity of the pair that in the parlia- 
ment of 1321 almost the entire baronage turned upon the favor- 
ites; and the lords, "peers of the realm" as they had begun to call 
themselves, passed a formal sentence, decreeing the Despenser 
estates forfeited and banishing the Desj)ensers from the land. 

The triumph of Thomas was as brief as the reverse was fatal. 
An insult offered to the queen by Lady Badlesmere, gave the king 

a pretext for raising an army. The barons joined him, 
The fall of ■, r„, i i -, , 

Earl Thomas, and Thomas, who had no love to spare on the Badles- 

1322. 

meres, held aloof. But the king finding himself at the 
head of an army at last, with that energy which even the most 
contemptible of the Plantagenet race were capable of displaying at 
times, turned upon the friends of Thomas and proceeded to avenge 
the fall of the Despensers. The border castles of Hereford, 
Audley, and D'Amory were marked for destruction. Thomas now 
saw his mistake, and summoning his followers, "the good lords," 
at Doncaster, prepared for open war. The king, however, had 
secured the first move in the game, and Thomas with all his energy 
could not regain his advantage. At Boroughbridge he was fairly 
brought to bay, and in the battle which followed, his little army 

was routed and himself taken. Four days later, he was 
Thomcmof'''^ tried in his own castle of Pontefract, condemned as a 
Lancaster, traitor, and at once put to death. "So the blood of 

March 22. 5 i 

Gaveston was avenged, and the tide of savage cruelty 
began to flow in a broader stream." Thirty of Lancaster's adher- 
ents were also executed, and many more were imprisoned, while a 
vast we^th in the form of fines and forfeitures was gathered from 
those whom obscurity or family influence saved from the fate of 
the leaders. Earl Thomas soon became a popular hero. With 
characteristic inconsistency the people, forgetting his blunders and 
his despotism, lamented Boroughbridge as a second Evesham, and 
Thomas as a second Montfort. The usual miracles were reported 
from his tomb and his name became a watchword of liberty. 

Six weeks after Boroughbridge, Edward held a parliament at 



344 THE BARONS AND THE FAVORITES [edwakd II. 

York, and at once secured the revocation of the Ordinances and a 
formal declaration of the theory of constitutional government 
toward which all these struggles were tending. By this 
mentofYo'rii, statement, all "matters to be settled for the estate of 
^^^^' the king and his heirs, and for the estate of the realm 

and of the people were to be treated, accorded, and established in 
parliaments by the king, and by the consent of the prelates, earls 
and barons, and commonalty of the realm, according as had 
hitherto been accustomed;"^ the government must not again be 
put into the hands of an irresponsible commission as in 1311. 

The Despensers Avere now supreme; they had sought to win the 
commons by recognizing their right as a constituent part of the 
national assembly, denying for all time the right of an oligarchy of 
the great nobles to rule England, and the parliament had 
responded by reversing the hostile acts which had been passed by 
the lords at the instigation of Lancaster and Hereford. Yet the 
unfortunate word "favorite" clung to the Despensers; the people 
saw them fattening on the estates of the slaughtered lords, and 
they could not forget. 

The king, however, was now without a rival. Men might 
league secretly with the Scots, as did the earl of Carlisle, but they 
durst not openly brave the king and his council. 
heUa"as^a' Earl Thomas had left his brother Henry as his heir, 
■^" ^'' but the king, by refusing to confer upon him the 

Lancastrian estates, had left him, for the time at least, a political 
cipher. But there was one whom neither the king nor the 
Despensers had taken into their calculations, the French queen 
of Edward, Isabella. With all his faults Edward had not been 
an unkind husband; but the close relationship of the queen to 
Lancaster had forbidden the fullest confidence between the royal 
joair. Isabella, moreover, hated the king's ministers, and soon 
became the center of a widely extended intrigue. It is not likely 
that the queen at this time had consciously determined upon 
treason. She found herself the center of a group of inferior men, 
who saw their ambitions balked by the fall of Lancaster and their 
one chance of some day becoming bishops or ministers of state 

1 Tasvvell-Langniead, p. 255. 



1323-1324] ISABELLA AND MORTIMER 345 

wane before the continued prosperity of the Despensers, and, stnng 
by her husband's lack of confidence, piqued by the successes of 
the men whom she hated, and puffed up by the flattery of the 
creatures who fawned about her, she accepted , the role of chief 
plotter and soon became involved in the sad intrigue, which has so 
deservedly blackened her name for all time. 

In 1322 Isabella's brother, Philip V. of France, died aud the 
new king Charles IV., also a brother, summoned Edward in 
accordance with the custom of the feudal age to come 
onhevioT ^^ France and do homage for the fiefs of Ponthieu ^ and 
France Grascony. But the Despensers, conscious of their 

growing unpopularity, were afraid to allow Edward to 
leave the kingdom. For two years negotiations dragged on, 
Edward seeking to avoid giving offense to his powerful brother-in- 
law, and the enemies of the Despensers bringing all influence to 
bear upon Charles to prevent a compromise. Finally a per- 
emptory summons was sent by the French king, accom- 
panied by a threat of forfeiture in case of longer 
delay. This summons was nothing less than an ultimatum, 
as the modern politician would call it, that is, a threat of war. 
Then Edward in sore despair sent over his queen to plead his 
cause at the French court. She parted with him on good 
terms, and at the French court presented his cause with such 
apparent success, that Charles agreed to allow her son Prince 
Edward to represent his father, and to make over the provinces to 
him in the king's stead. 

The unhappy king had fallen into a most cunningly devised 
trap. The young prince had hardly reached France, when all 
disguise was thrown off by the queen and she openly 
muifsaMia jo^^^^^l the king's bitterest enemies. The most danger- 
ous of these was Eoger Mortimer, the lord of Wigmore, 
an old friend of Lancaster, who had recently escaped from the 
Tower and now found at the French court ample opportunity for 
satisfying his desire for revenge. He won an unbounded influence 
over the queen's mind, and used it to the undoing of the king. 

' For origin of Plantagenet claims to Ponthieu, see Stubbs, Early 
Plantagenets, p. 243, also below p. 364. 



34:6 THE BARONS AND THE FAVORITES [euwaed 11. 

The young Edward, a mere lad of fourteen, was taught that his duty 
to his father demanded him to break the power of the Despensers. 
Even the king's brother, Edmund of Kent, was induced to join the 
conspirators. The plotting at last became so open, and the scan- 
dal so flagrant, that Charles out of self-respect was compelled to 
drive Mortimer and the queen from the court. They found a more 
congenial atmosphere at the court of Hainault, whose count was 
not above sharing in the profit of the proposed invasion, and 
readily furnished men and ships, while the Italian bankers fur- 
nished money. 

Edward knew what was going on but was helpless to defend 
himself from the threatened blow. Parliament met, but refused 

to act. Military musters were ordered but the people 
Landinrj of refused to assemble. As long as the Despensers were 
iemher%m! retained in power, no one would support the king. 

In September 1320, Isabella landed in Suffolk with 
her foreign army and at once proclaimed her mission as the 
"avenger of Lancaster and the sworn foe of the favorites." 
Edward, who was in London at the time, called upon the citizens 
for help; but no man would draw sword in the canse of the 
hated ministers. He then fled westward seeking help among the 
Despenser lands. The Londoners rose behind him and murdered 
the unfortunate bishop of Exeter, the treasurer, who was regarded 
as a creature of the Despensers. Archbishop Eeynolds sought to 
make the best terms he could with the queen. 

The earls, the bishops, Henry of Lancaster, the king's half- 
brothers, all, almost to a man, now went over to the queen. The 

king fled to Gloucester, then to Wales, whence he 
Death of tJw souorht to pass into Ireland. On October 26, the queen 

Despensers. or 5-1 

reached Bristol; here she took the elder Despenser, 
now earl of Winchester, and hanged him forthwith. The lords 
in her train declared Prince Edward "Guardian of the King- 
dom," and in his name summoned a parliament. In the mean- 
time the queen continued to make havoc among her husband's 
friends and advisers. The young Despenser was taken with the 
king on November 16, and on the 24th was hanged, drawn, and 
quartered; the king was brought to Kenil worth for safe keeping. 



1327] THE CHARGES AGAIISTST EDWARD 347 

The reign of Edward II. was now ended. The parliament 
which the lords had summoned in the name of Prince Edward met 

at Westminster January 7, 1327. There were those 
auainat ' to whom it Seemed that the matter had gone far enough, 

and that now the Despensers had been struck down, the 
king, harmless enough in himself, might be left to continue his 
reign. But Mortimer, the dark lord of Wigmore, knowing that 
such crime as his could never be forgiven, and that so long as the 
king remained even nominally in power, his own head could never be 
safe upon his shoulders, used all his influence to secure an imme- 
diate deposition. What should come after deposition, had been also 
fully determined no doubt; but this for the time he kept to him- 
self. In the presence of the armed bands which he had brought 
with him to the parliament and with the clamor of the London 
mob rising without, the courage of the few friends of the fallen 
king, who may have found their way to Westminster, melted, and 
no voice was raised in his defense. On the other hand the high- 
est dignitaries of the church so far forgot themselves as to spread 
the mantle of their authority over the shameful plot. Eeynolds, 
the archbishop of Canterbury, declared that the voice of God spoke 
in the clamor of the people. Bishop Orleton declared that the life 
of tlie queen would not be safe if the king were released. Bishop 
Stratford of Winchester presented the series of articles which 
were to serve as a basis for formal abdication, declaring: Ji7-st that 
the king v/as incompetent and throughout his reign had put 
himself in the power of evil counsellors, and had proved him- 
self unable to distinguish "good from evil," and when the great 
men of the realm had called upon him to remedy the existing evil, 
he had obstinately rejected their counsel ; second, he had spent his 
time in labors unseemly for a king and had neglected the business 
of the kingdom ; third, by his mismanagement he had lost Scotland, 
Ireland, and Gascony; fourth, he had injured the church, and 
destroyed many great and noble men of the land; fifth, he had 
violated his coronation oath; sixth, he was a menace to the pros- 
perity of the country in that he was without hope of amendment. 
It was assumed that these charges were proved "by common 
notoriety," yet the queen's advisers shrank from an act so revolu- 



34:8 THE BARONS AKD THE FAVORITES [edward ii. 

tiouary as deposition ; they preferred to secure from the broken- 
spirited king a formal abdication. The matter was not difficult. 
The unhappy monarch, shorn of his friends and aban- 
dlcatimfde^' doued by the nation, had nothing to do but yield. It 
cidedupon. gj.[QyQ([ j^jm much, he said, that he had deserved so lit- 
tle of his people, and he begged pardon of all who were present; 
but since it could not be otherwise, he thanked them for electing 
his eldest son. 

On the 20th of January the enforced abdication was completed; 
the parliament renounced the homage and fealties of its mem- 
bers, and the steward of the household publicly 
AhdicaUnnof broke his staff as a token that Edward II. had ceased 

Edivard II. 

to reign. Of the subsequent life of Edward, but little 
ever reached the ears of the public. Grim stories of insult and 
actual bodily suffering at the hands of brutal keepers soon began 
to be whispered about, but no hand was raised to help him. A 
terror seized upon those who by kinship or gratitude might feel 
called upon to interfere. On the 21st of September, eight months 
after the abdication, Edward was murdered at Berkeley Castle in 
some mysterious way, so cunningly and devilishly devised as to 
leave no mark of violence upon his person. "Thus ended a reign 
full of tragedy, a life that may be pitied, but affords no ground for 
sympathy. Strange infatuation, unbridled vindictiveness, reck- 
lessness beyond belief, the breach of all natural affection, of love, 
of honor, and loyalty, are here; but there is none who stands 
forth as a hero. There are great sins and great faults and awful 
vengeance, but nothing to admire, none to be praised." ^ 

The constitutional significance of the reign of Edward II. is of 

considerable importance. The right of the nation to a voice in the 

selection of the king's ministers was undoubtedly set 

ConRfitufinnaJ forth in the successive overthrow of the favorites, Gaves- 

^HlllltlCdllCC. 

of ihr '■"'!/'/ ton and the Despensers, although it was to be a long time 

0/ Edward II. x ' o o ^ 

before the principle would be definitely accepted, or its 
full significance understood. Linked with the right of the nation to 
a voice in the control of the king's ministers, or rather the justi- 
fication of the principle itself, was still another idea, which since 

' Stubbs, Early Plantagenets, p. 288. 



MEANI]SrG OF DEPOSITION OF EDWAED II. 349 

the days of John Lackland had been slowly but surely taking 
definite shape in the mind of the people, that the crown was not a 
piece of private property to be administered or neglected in accord- 
ance with the whim or caprice of the incumbent, but that it was a 
public trust, and that the accident of birth, instead of granting to 
a king immunities such as no subject enjoyed, imposed rather 
responsibilities which made him beyond all men the servant of the 
nation, and that as a servant he was to be held to a strict and 
awful accountability. 

The deposition of an unfaithful king was not a new exercise of 
the authority of a national council. The old English witan had 
not hesitated to depose such a king as Ethelred the Redeless. 
And yet since the Norman Conquest there had been no actual case 
of deposition. Had John Lackland lived, he undoubtedly would 
have been dethroned and possibly put to death. The question of 
a change in the succession had also been raised by the barons in 
the case of Henry III. But now, whatever may be thought of the 
actors or of the motives which inspired them, an English king 
had been formally arraigned by the nation represented in the 
parliament, declared incompetent and unworthy to reign, the 
oaths of homage and fealty withdrawn, and the crown transferred 
to a new king; and the sole justification of this act of the 
national council was the failure of the king to fulfill the duties of 
his high office. 



CHAPTEE III 

EDWARD III. AND THE OPENING OF THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR 

EDWARD III., 1327-1360 

THE VALOIS SUCCESSION 

Louis IX., (?.. 1270 

Philip III., 1270-1285 
I 

Philip IV., tlie Fair Charles of Valois 

1285-13U I 

Philip VI. 



Ill I 1338-1350 

Louis X. Pliilip V. Charles IV. Isabella | 

1314-1316 1316-1333 1333-1338 m. John the Good 

J Edward II. 1350-1364 

I I I of England i 

Joan John I Charles V., 

I Edward III. the Wise 
Charles of Navarre, h. 1332 

Edward III. was only fourteen years of age when the successful 
treason of his mother brought him to the throne. A regency, 
therefore, was necessary. It pleased Isabella and Mor- 
d^m"""*^ timer, however, while retaining the real control to keep 
themselves in the background and shoulder all responsi- 
bility for the administration upon men like Henry of Lancaster 
and the ex-king's brothers who by reason of their royal lineage 
commanded the confidence of the people. Such an arrangement 
detracted in nothing from the actual influence of the chief plotters 
and for a time concealed from the nation the real nature of the 
revolution. The position of the "guardians," as the committee of 
regency was called, was thus not an enviable one. They were 
responsible for a government which they could not direct. They 
were compelled to submit to the insolent dictation of a man whom 
neither office nor royal lineage entitled to speak. They had 
struck down the king's favorite, to exalt the queen's favorite. 

But the part of Mortimer in the recent plot had been too 
prominent, his present influence was too marked, to permit him to 
remain unnoticed in the background, nor did it take the people long 
to divine his actual relation to the queen. They had never liked 

350 




GENERAL MAP OF 
HUNDRED YEARS WAR 



1328-1330] FALL OF MORTIMEE 351 

the man and resented his insolent ways. . They were particularly 

offended by the presence of a body guard of knights which he kept 

ever in attendance j an ostentation which was hardly 

divine the seemly in a man who was not even an earl and who had no 

SGC7'&t 

nominal connection with the government. Grim rumors 
also began to spread as to the fate of the deposed king; men's blood 
stood still at the horrible details, and they were ready to believe 
the worst. There was something wrong also in the recent peace 

with the Scots, in which the guardians had formally 
NoHhampion, ^ud finally recognized the independence of that realm. 
aici,i328. rpj^g peace perhaps was wise, but what had become of 
the £20,000 which the Scots agreed to pay into the royal treasury? 
Eumor reported that the guilty queen and her paramour had 
appropriated this money to their own uses. Was it for this then 
that the English must suffer the humiliation of defeat? Was it 
not enough that Edward II. had thrown away Scotland? Must 
this debauched Frenchwoman now openly trade in the blood of his 
subjects? The peojjle called the peace "the shameful peace," and 
when the guardians, in order to keep their agreement with the Scots, 
proposed to return the Stone of Scone, so great was the uproar among 
the Londoners that the king's councillors dared not proceed, and 
thus the. famous talisman was left permanently in English hands. 
Mortimer's insolence in the meantime kept pace with his grow- 
ing unpopularity. His one thought seemed to be to add to his 

wealth and titles. He was made Earl of March. He 
Mortimer, Hved in regal state. In 1329 in a moment of anger he 
^■'''^" brought a baud of armed retainers to the parliamxcnt of 

Salisbury, broke into the parliament chamber, and threatened the 
members with personal violence. At last the reproaches of the 
people and the continued insolence of the favorite goaded Lancas- 
ter and the king's uncles ^ into action, but only to be cowed into 

1 THE UNCLES OF EDWAED III. 

Edward I. 

m. 1 Ele anor of Castile I m. 2 Marg aret of France 

Edward II. m. Isabella of France \ | 

I Thomas, Ediniind, 

Edward III Earl of Norfolk Earl of Kent 



352 THE HUN"DRED YEAES' WAR [: 



Edward 111. 



silence again, the moiuent the cunning villain, who was fast ter- 
rorizing the whole kingdom, raised his head. Mortimer, however, 
on his part was not to be satisfied with silence, and with diabolical 
art set a snare for the high-minded but simple-hearted Edmund of 
Kent, who was led by Mortimer's secret agents to believe that the 
late king was still alive, and was thus tricked into committing him- 
self to a plan of rescue. The unfortunate earl was at once arrested 
upon a charge of treason, condemned by an obsequious parliament 
then sitting at Winchester, and hurried to execution. A terror 
seized the nobility; no man could feel sure of his position, or 
know what devilish trap might be spread for his feet. In 
desperation the nobles turned to the boy king. Though a lad in 
years, he felt deeply the humiliation of his position and had grown 
restless under the tyrannical tutelage which his mother and 
Mortimer had imposed upon him. Isabella scented mischief and 
carried Mortimer off with her to Nottingham Castle; but the 
young king with a band of determined men followed them, and, 
secretly gaining access to the castle through an underground pas- 
sage, since known as "Mortimer's Hole," seized the "favorite, 
and, with the cries and protests of the queen ringing in 
their ears, bore him down the stairs and out into the night 
and off to London, where he was straightway condemned by 
the lords and hanged at the Elms. Isabella was sent to Castle 
Rising where she was kept a prisoner until her death twenty-eight 
years later. 

The actual reign of Edward III. now began. He had "a hand- 
some person, pleasant and affable manners, a fluent tongue and an 
energy that contrasted most happily with the listless 
ciiaracterof jncloleuce of his unhappy father." He was, however, 

Edward III. ^ ^-^ ' ' 

no statesman like Edward I. and soon developed a 
thriftless recklessness in pursuing the ends of mere personal ambi- 
tion. Like Richard I. he gloried in the glamour of costly military 
pageants. He thought little of the expense and suffering which 
he imposed upon friend or foe, if only he might acquit himself with 
what he called honor. Yet, during the early part of his reign, he 
was loved and honored by his people, who did not then understand 
the heartless selfishness of his real nature. 



1330-1347] RESTORATION OF ORDER 353 

The first acts of Edward were directed to the suppression of the 

disorder which had sprang np under the weak government of his 

father. Armed bands of outlaws infested the highways, 

Restoration seized travelers for ransom, and overawed courts of 

of order. ' 

justice. The great nobles, as Mortimer at Salisbury in 
1329, did not hesitate to employ such bands to defy the laws or 
work out their criminal plots. Even the boys on the street were 
infused with'the prevailing spirit of disorder; a law of the times 
forbids them to amuse themselves by "knocking off the hats of 
passers-by in the neighborhood of the palace of Westminster." 
The Statute of Winchester of Edward I, had made each locality 
responsible for all crime within its precincts; the leading men of 
each county were now in addition to assemble the people by hue 
and cry, and pursue the peace-breaker "from vill to vill" and 
"from hundred to hundred." The king was also to make regular 
tours through the counties to see that this law was observed. The 
courts of "trailbaston," which had been instituted under special 
commissions by Edward I. for the purpose of dealing with gangs of 
outlaws too powerful for the ordinary courts to handle, were also 
revived and did good service during the first twenty years of Edward 
III.'s reign. In 1347 these special courts were superseded by the 
appointment of permanent local officers known as "keepers of the 
peace," who soon began to be called "justices of the peace," 
becoming a recognized part of the police system of the counties. 

While the young Edward was thus putting his hand to the 
restoration of order within his kingdom, fresh troubles arose with 

Scotland which taxed seriously the wisdom of the new 
u!Ps^amm't administration. It had been one of the terms of the 
land^""^' P®^^® ^^ ^^^^ ^^^^* *^^® estates of English nobles in 

Scotland, which Bruce had confiscated, should be 
restored. This promise had not been fulfilled, and the English 
barons who were interested, now that the great Bruce was no more 
and the kingdom left to his infant son, believed that the moment 
had come for enforcing their rights, and proposed to place upon 
the throne of Scotland, Edward Balliol, son of the quondam King 
John. They first appealed to Edward, but he could not openly 
violate the recent treaty and ostentatiously closed the border roads 



354 THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR [ 



Edward III. 



against them. They were left, however, to fit out their expedition 
at Eavensjjur and finally sail away for the coast of Fife with a small 
army of 3,300 men. Their success was beyond their expectations. 

They met the regent of Scotland at Dupplin Moor, 
Moor,''August August 12, 1332, and easily defeated him. Perth, the 
12,1332. capital, was then taken, and on September 24 Edward 

Balliol was crowned at Scone. ^ An army of Scots hastily gathered 
to retake Perth but disbanded again without accomplishing any- 
thing, leaving the handful of English adventurers virtually in pos- 
session of the great part of the kingdom. Yet five weeks after 
the coronation, Balliol's mushroom throne had crumbled before the 
revival of the old Scottish national party, and he was himself a 
fugitive on English soil. 

The weakness of tlio regency, however, had been discovered, 
and the recovery of what Edward II. had lost seemed now 

an easy task. Edward III. was unequal to such 
ferenceof temptation, especially when Balliol waited to renew 

Edward III. ...... -m • -, 

his father s homage. Edward, therefore, recognized 
Balliol as rightful king of Scotland and sent him back with an 
English army to support his claim. Edward himself Joined the 
invaders before Berwick, and when the Scots attempted to relieve 

the town, met them at Halidon Hill, where mainly 
mli'^'"^ tlirough the efficiency of the English archery, he 

administered such a crushing defeat, that for the 
moment it seemed that Bannockburn had been undone and all 
that the Scots had gained by a generation of sacrifice had been 
lost. Balliol again assumed the royal state, and formally recog- 
nized the English overlordship. He also ceded to Edward, Tweed- 
dale and part of Lothian. 

The second reign of Edward Balliol was hardly longer or 
more satisfactory than the first. The humiliation of Scotland 

was more than her proud people could endure, fired as 
firnvf Bai^''^' they were by the traditions of the glorious past. The 
'^'^" French king Philip VI. also was quick to see the 

advantage of a vigorous Scottish alliance in case of quarrel with 

^ Scone, the ancient capital, was two miles from Perth. Perth re- 
mained the capital until 1436. 



1332-1339] CAUSES OF HUNDRED YEARS' WAR 355 

England, and did not propose to allow Edward III. to entrench 
himself permanently in Scotland. He sent his ships to the coast, 
and while avoiding open war, managed to keep alive a party loyal 
to King David. In 1339 Balliol was once more driven from the 
conntry, and two years later David Bruce, who had been hurried ofi 
to France in 1332, ventured to return. Edward could not again 
interfere, for England and France were already drifting into the 
shadows of the "Hundred Years' War," and he needed all his 
strength to defend his own coasts against a threatened French 
invasion. Berwick, however, remained in the possession of the 
English.^ 

The great event of Edward's reign was now approaching, the 
opening of the long duel with France. Like most great national 
conflicts this struggle struck its roots far into the past. 
Causes of the Ever since a vassal of the French crown had become 
Yearl'^war. king of England, it had been the accepted policy of the 
French court to weaken the hold of the English king 
upon his French vassals and drive him from the continent if pos- 
sible. Hence the complications which had sprung from the ill- 
advised attempt of Edward I. to subjugate Scotland, had been 
hailed with satisfaction by his watcliful neighbor across the Chan- 
nel, and a new clause added to the old traditional policy of the 
French court; namely, the maintenance of a close alliance with 
Scotland against England and the support of the inde[)eadence of 
the Scottish crown at all hazards. It was not that the French 
king loved the Scots ; but he saw here a chance to fetter his rival 
by preparing for him a powerful diversion at home, whenever 
England and France should come to blows. As we have seen it was 
this alliance with France which roused John Balliol to assert himself 

^ Tlie English possession was not yet permanent. Between 1332 and 
1461 the Scots regained the town several times, although each time they 
failed to hold it. But in 1461, Henry VI. formally ceded it to them in 
gratitude for the kind treatment which they had given him after Tow- 
ton, and the Scots held the place for twenty-one years. In 1481 it passed 
permanently into English hands. The English, however, still regarded 
the town as a part of a foreign kingdom, conceding to it its own civil 
and militaiy establishment, and leaving it in fact a separate but depend- 
ent state until the act of Union in 1807. 



356 THE HUNDRED YEARS ' WAR [ 



Edward III. 



in 1295, and gave Wallace liis opportunity in 1297. It was a French 
war also that had assisted Bruce in 1306, and it was the continued 
friendship of France that had enabled the old Scottish party to expel 
the yonnger Balliol at last and bring back David Bruce in triumph 
to his father's throne. The earlier wars for the maintenance of 
the claims of English kings south of the Channel, had never taken 
any very serious hold upon the English nation. For the most 
part the people, and, after the loss of JSTormandy, even the feudal 
nobility, took no deep interest in these wars, bnt begrudged rather 
both the time and the money which they were ever demanding. 
But the Scottish wars had struck nearer home; national sentiment 
had been awakened. Hence Englishmen could not overlook the 
unneighborly acts of the French, and it was not long before they 
began to hate the French as bitterly as they hated the Scots. Other 
causes also helped to fan the popular hatred and develop the war 
spirit. England and France had already begun their commercial 
rivalry, and were elbowing each other on the seas and in the marts 
of the Low Countries. The merchant service of civilized nations, 
moreover, was still exposed to the temptation of piracy; the plun- 
dering of merchantmen by their rivals of other nations even in 
times of peace was hardly regarded as a crime. The battle in the 
harbor of St. Mahe in 1293 had been the direct outgrowth of such 
piracies. 

In the year 1328 Charles IV., the last male of the elder line of 
Capet, died. There were nieces and a sister,^ the mother of 

Edward III. ; but the French lawyers, in the interests 
'^J}lZ^}!!!f of the collateral house of Valois, had seen fit to give a 

constitutional interpretation to the old Frankish law 
which decreed that "no part of the Salic land could fall to a 
woman." The law of course applied only to the transmission of 
private property, and even here had long since become a dead 
letter. But it was sufficient for the purpose of the lawyers to serve 
as the basis for a quibble in order to justify the transfer of the 
crown to Philip, the son of Charles of Valois. 

The new king had adopted fully the traditional policy of the 

' Charles of NavaiTe was not born until 1332, see table p. 350. 



MAKING READY FOR WAR 357 

French court and proceeded to seize every opportunity of harassing 

the English. He had kept the borders of Gnienne in turmoil and 

had continued to encourage the French piracies. He 

Policy of ~ ^ 

Philip of had also renewed the former alliance of Philip IV. 

VciToxs 

with the Scots, sending them ships, men, and money, 
and in 1332 had given the exile David Bruce a cordial welcome. 

Ten years of Edward III. 's reign had now passed. In spite of 
the renewal of the quarrel with the Scots, at home England had 
enjoyed comparative quiet and the nation had been 
ready for restored to mnch of the prosperity and confidence which 
^^"'' it had enjoyed under Edward I. Dupplin Moor and 

Halidon Hill had done much to efface the deep humiliation of 
Bannockburn, and the people, flushed with victory, were not 
inclined to endure much longer the persistent interference of the 
French king in insular affairs, or the ever-increasing annoyance of 
French piracies. War in short had already begun. Not only was it 
no secret that French money was equipping ships in Sicily, Genoa, 
Norway, and Holland, but French ships were actually wasting 
the English coast. The English also were equipping themselves 
for the struggle. Parliament had adopted the quarrel as its own, 
and had not only voted large grants of money, but, without a 
protest, had allowed the king to violate the promise of Edward I. 
concerning the raising of money by tallage. Each seaport town 
also was required to furnish a quota of ships for the defense 
of the coasts; a measure for which Edward III. had precedent 
enough in the past. The Scottish alliance of Philip, Edward 
sought to offset by an alliance with the petty principalities which 
fringed the eastern borders of France; for the most part purchas- 
ing their support outright either by subsidy or by the promise of 
important commercial advantages. He bought up the emperor 
for a subsidy of 3,000 florins, getting 2,000 men to fight for him, 
and when the German princes of the Ehine hesitated to fight under 
a foreign prince, the emperor conferred upon Edward the title of 
"Vicar General of the Empire on the Left Bank of the Rhine," 
with authority to lead the princes of the emjDire for seven years. 

Of all these allies, the Flemings were the most important. In 
the industrial arts they were the foremost people of Europe. 



358 THE HUNDKED YEARS' WAR [edward III. 

Their cities teemed with hard-headed burghers who had made for- 
tunes by manufacturing English-grown wool, and had little 
sympathy with the feudal maxims which controlled the 

The impor- t-^ n , . ^ « t • i 

tance of the h rench kingdom of which they were nominally a part. 
Flemings. . . . , -j i. 

-Nine cities had already formed a defensive league under 

the inspiration of the famous "Brewer of Ghent," James Van 

Arteveldt, and, quick to see the advantage of an alliance with the 

country which furnished the wool for their looms, now readily 

yielded themselves to the blandishments of Edward. 

It is difficult to say, then, just when tlie war began or who was 
more responsible. The open support which France had given to Scot- 
land, the nttack upon Gascony, and the plunder of Eng- 
ningofthe lish shipping, would be regarded by any modern state as 
war, 1337. sufficient ground for war. In 1337 Van Arteveldt came 
to blows with the count of Flanders, who was a vassal of the 
French king, and Edward sent over an English fleet to support 
his ally, and drove the garrison of Count Louis out of Cadsaud, 
The next year Edward himself went to the continent to begin a 
direct attack upon France using Flanders as a base. Here he was 
made to feel at once the strength of Philip and the worthlessness 
of his own allies. The frontier cities were really huge fortresses, or 
fortified camps, well garrisoned for long sieges, and the two years 
of 1338 and 1339 Edward spent in the vain endeavor to break 
through this ring of frontier strongholds. Phih'p also took the field, 
but stubbornly refused to be drawn into a general engagement, 
satisfied to see Edward wear out the patience of his troops and 
exhaust his resources in useless campaigning against stone walls. 
Edward's allies also soon proved that they were more interested in 
■ drawing his subsidies than in defeating his enemies. Even the 
Flemings, upon whom Edward had most reason to depend, while 
perfectly willing to march under Edward's banners and draw pay 
from his treasury, hesitated when it came to fighting against their 
sovereign in person. John Lackland had met the same difficulty 
when he tried to bring his Flemish mercenaries into the field 
against Prince Louis. 

These and other considerations now led Edward to determine 
upon a step which soon gave new color to the entire war, effectually 



1337-1340] EDWARD CLAIMS FREKCH CKOWN 359 

obscured its original cause, and made peace impossible until one 

or both of the two nations had been entirely exhausted. This 

step was to claim for himself the crown of France as his 

vances claim bv right of his mother Isabella. When Charles IV. 

to the French ^. ^ . ^ _,,, tti-,- i n 

crmvnaaa dicd in 1328, Isabella and Mortimer, wlio were then in 

ivar measure. ••in, • i j_ 

power, while accepting the principle that a woman might 

not inherit the crown of France, had yet advanced the claim of the 
young Edward on the ground that a claim might be transmitted 
by a daughter to her male offspring. But the claim was not pressed, 
and Edward by doing homage to Philip YI. for the French pos- 
sessions of the Plantagenets, had virtually recognized Philip as right- 
ful king of France. Largely, therefore, as a war measure, and at 
the earnest solicitation of Van Arteveldt, Edward determined to 
assert his title as king of France. It is difficult to understand 
the logic by which Edward could convince himself that his claim 
was just. Even if in 1328 he were the nearest male heir of 
the elder Capetian line, he had been debarred since by the birth of 
Charles of Navarre, the grandson of Louis X. Still, as a war 
measure, Edward's claim was good enough, and accordingly 
in January 1340,^ as a preliminary to a new campaign, he 
formally declared himself king of France by right of his mother, 
and quartered the arms of the leopards with those of the fleur-de- 
lis, adoj)ting the motto "God and my right." On the 8th of 
February he carried his effrontery so far as to issue a charter to 
the French as their king. 

The war was now on in serious earnest; the quarrel of Edward 
and Philip was irreconcilable. In the early spring Edward 
returned to England to levy new taxes upon his people 
navai'victfmi ^^^^ prepare for the new campaign. But Philip had 
fmie^^4'i34o changed his tactics somev/hat and, by gathering a fleet 
of upwards of two hundred sail in the harbor of Sluys, 
proposed to prevent the return of Edward to the Low Countries. 

1 Edward evidently had had this step in mind since 1337, for he had 
used the title as early as October 7 of that year, but inasmuch as the 
title is not found in any documents between that date and the 26th of 
January, 1340, he seems to have temporarily abandoned the matter. The 
better judgment of Europe was against it, and on March 5, 1340, the 
pope wrote to dissuade him. See Stubbs, C. H. II, p. 400, note 1. 



360 THE HUNDKED YEAKS' WAE [ 



Edward II. 



Edward promptly accepted the challenge and on the 24th of June 
attacked Philip upon his own ground. As the English ships, with 
the wind and sun at their backs, bore down upon the enemy, the 
archers swept the French decks, while Edward and his knights, sword 
in hand, stood ready to board the moment the shock of collision 
came. The victory was as brilliant as it was complete. The 
French fleet was annihilated; thirty thousand men were slain 
npon the decks or drowned in the harl)or. No such victory had 
been won by the English at sea since the exploit of Hubert de 
Burgh before Dover in 1217. 

The English remained masters of the Channel for thirty years. 
Not only was all fear of a French invasion dispelled; but the 

entire French coast lay open for Edward to choose his 
siwui^"^ own time and place of attack. Yet instead of taking 

advantage of his victory he sat down before the first big 
French town that lay across his path, this time Tournay, and 
frittered away precious months in a vain attempt to persuade 
Philip to meet him like a knight and settle their qnarrel in fair 
combat. Philip, who had already proved himself a master in a 
contest of matching patience with Edward, simply repeated the 
tactics of the former campaign, and with such success that the 
autumn passed and still Edward had accomplished nothing; his 
supplies were exhausted and the winter was coming on. He was 
glad, therefore, to secure a truce of nine months and be allowed 
to return home where his presence was by this time sorely needed. 
Nearly five years had now passed since the- beginning of the 
war ; vast sums had been squandered ; thousands of lives had been 

sacrificed, and nothing had been gained. If there were 
firsi'five^ ^^^^ advantages on either side, they lay with Philip rather 
iT?,!'""'^' than with Edward. It is true that Edward had 

destroyed the French fleet, but he had signally failed to 
break through Philip's frontier. Philip's lieutenants on the other 
hand had broken into Gascony and now held a part of that unhappy 
country for their king. The Scots, moreover, had by the aid of 
French troops recovered their cities and castles and once more 
threatened the northern shires of England. Five years of war had 
not sweetened the temper of the English people nor softened their 



1341-1343] THE BEETOlSr SUCCESSION, 361 

hearts towards the French, but they were weary of a war which 
had borne such meagre results, and had lost much of their early 
enthusiasm. Parliament was growing restless; its supplies were 
doled out with a niggardly hand and the members were begin- 
ning to show alarming signs of a disposition to inquire into the way 
in which the king's ministers were spending his money. The 
emperor's support also was weakening and the pope was exerting 
all his powerful influence to bring about a permanent peace. 
Hence at the opening of 134:2 peace did not seem to be far off, 
when a new cause of quarrel arose in a dispute over the succession 
to the Duchy of Brittany. 

In 1341 John III. of Brittany had died childless.^ His brother 
Guy had died before him but had left a daughter Jeanne,* the wife 

of Charles of Blois, nephew of the French king. But 
Siwcfliifn- ^^^®^'® ^^^ ^^^0 ^ half-brother of the late duke, another 
renetvaiof' John, who bore the title of de Montfort from his 

mother. Philip claimed the duchy for his niece in 
nccordance with the well established law of Brittany. De Mont- 
fort claimed the succession as the sole male heir of his father 
Arthur, Here was an application of the Salic law which was not 
so pleasing to Philip. Edward, who minded little the incon- 
sistency of his position when he saw an opportunity of striking 
Philip in a new quarter, took up the claim of de Montfort. 
Thus the war shifted to Brittany. Edward's candidate, how- 
ever, made little progress and soon found his way into one 
of Philip's prisons. In the autumn of 1342 Edward himself came 
over, but after many trials and much sufi'ering on the part 
The truce of ^^ ^^'^ troops, he was glad to accept a truce again 
¥^^^?5f!'.?,^'^' as the best way out of a bad business. The truce was 

u lllilitVi y, ^ 

1343. ^Q jg^g^ until Michaelmas, was to include all the con- 

tending parties, and might be made permanent, if the English 

1 THE BEETOX SUCCESSION 

Arthur Duke of Brittany 

\ 

John III. Guy John de Montfort 

Duke of Brittany, | 

died 1841 Jeanne = Charles Count of 

Blois, nephew of Philip VI. 



362 THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR " [ 



Edward III. 



parliament should consent to its terms; for Edward had thought 
it politic to defer the final decision for parliament. 

Parliament met early in 1343 and agreed to lay the matter of 

quarrel before the pope for arbitration, at the same time declaring 

for the continuance of the war, if peace could not be 

Ineffectual j^^d iipon iust terms. It is difficult to believe that 

peace '- J 

negotiations, Edward was doing else than playing for time. What- 
ever he may have thought of his claims upon the 
French crown, he had fully made np his mind to accept nothing 
short of the absolute sovereignty of Guienne. Philip on the other 
hand was just as determined that Edward should never rule French 
territory save as his vassal. The negotiations, therefore, dragged 
on their weary length and ended at last where they began. It 
was no doubt what Edward expected; possibly what he most 
desired. He had gained eighteen mouths of valuable time and was 
ready to strike again. 

Philip in the meantime had not been idle. Trouble still 

smouldered in Flanders. The small towns had turned against the 

cities, roused by their monopolies, and in the rioting 

Thcivar which ensucd Edward's old friend Van Arteveldt had 

reneivcd. 

been slain. Philip had, also, contrived to keep alive a 
powerful French party in Aquitaine, where he was steadily under- 
mining P^dward's influence. Edward sent hither in the summer 
of 1345 a considerable army under the command of Henry, Earl of 
Derby, the son of Henry of Lancaster, a commander of no mean 
parts, who by a series of brilliant successes fully justified the 
confidence of the king. The main expedition which was designed 
for Normandy followed in the spring. It was led by Edward in 
person and was composed of Irish, Welsh, and English, "a great 
army of souldiours well appointed," of whom ten thousand were 
bowmen. 

Edward landed on the northwest coast of Normandy and without 
any particular plan other than to punish the coast towns for their 
piracies, began ravaging the country, pillaging the 
campairin citios, and burning the shipping, but moving in a gen- 
eral easterly direction with Calais possibly as his goal, 
where he expected to find the Flemings in force and with them 



1346] CAMPAIGN OF CRECY 363 

take the city. All went well until Edward reached Rouen, for 
Philip had drawn away his soldiers to protect his southern borders 
against the vigorous attack of the earl of Lancaster.^ But at Rouen 
Edward found that the French had destroyed the bridges over the 
Seine and he was compelled to ascend the river toward Paris in 
search of another crossing. Edward's position was one of great 
peril. Before him lay the high walls of Paris, with its mighty 
population, formidable even in that day. Behind him lay an 
exasperated people, whose lands he had ruined and where he had 
himself destroyed the means of feeding an army. Philip, more- 
over, had hastily returned from the south, and now lay on the 
farther bank of the Seine at St. Denys, with an army which 
outnumbered the English two to one. Edward was in short 
caught in a trap. But Philip, most fortunately for Edward, mis- 
took the northward march for an attack upon Paris, an error in 
which he was confirmed by a skillful feint of the English. He 
waited therefore at St. Denys for Edward to wear himself out upon 
the city gates, while his own army continued to augment by daily 
arrivals from the south and east. But Edward in the meanwhile 
was quietly repairing the bridge at Poissy and on the 16th of 
August crossed to the east bank, and after defeating a detachment 
of new recruits who were advancing to join Philip, marched away 
toward Pontoise. At Airaines Edward halted for three days, while 
his scouts patroled the banks of the Somme in a vain search for a 
ford; for the only bridge which the French had spared on the 
lower river was at Abbeville, where Philip had had the foresight 
to leave a strong garrison, Edward's position was once more 
growing critical. Philip had at last broken camp at St. Denys 
and was swiftly approaching Airaines with an army which now 
outnumbered Edward's fully three to one, and was, moreover, 
eager for battle. Edward dared not delay longer and, as a forlorn 
hope, hastily broke camp and marched upon Abbeville. So hurried 
was his departure, that when the French entered his camp, two 
hours later, they found "meat on the spits, pasties in the ovens, 
and tables ready spread." Yet Edward's good fortune did not 

' Henry of Derby had become Earl of Lancaster by the death of his 
father, September 22, 1345. 



)64 THE HUISTDEED YEARS' WAR [e 



Edward 111. 



forsake him. As he neared Abbeville he learned of a ford at a 
place called Blanche Tache, where the waters of the >Somme widen 
ere they pass into the sea, and where an army might find footing 
at low tide. Edward easily reached the ford, but only to find him- 
self confronted from the op]30site bank by a force of twelve thou- 
sand men drawn up under Guimar du Fay. With the powerful 
army of Philip, however, pressing upon him from the rear, the 
English king had no choice but to lead his troops into the river 
and fight for the passage. The banks were speedily cleared by the 
English archers, and Edward's men-at-arms were soon joursuing 
the knights of Guimar across the fields of Ponthieu. The crossing 
was not won a minute too soon; Edward's rear guard had hardly 
shaken the water from their garments, when the light horse of the 
French advance apjDcared on the bank which the English had Just 
left. But Edward's men were now safe, the tide was already roll- 
ing in again over the white shoals; and nothing was left to Philip 
but to halt his army at Abbeville. 

Edward now declared that he would retreat no further. He 
was in Ponthieu,^ surrounded by abundance; his way was open 

to Calais; his army although small was formidable, 
Edward , n m •,• i i • i ,. 

withdraws to nor could Philip attack him before the morrow at the 

earliest. He would give his men, therefore, what 
remained of the day and the night for rest, and prepare to give a 
good account of himself when Philip should appear. Accord- 
ingly he first sent out numerous small parties to secure forage, and 
then withdrew the main body to the neighborhood of the little 
village of Crecy, finally taking up a strong position on a hill slope 
to the east of the town and facing Abbeville. 

In the meanwhile Philip also was attempting to give his unwieldy 
host an opportunity to rest at Abbeville, but with poor success. 

The accommodations of the little town were altogether 
Abb^ii inadequate to the needs of so many men and the great 

part slept in the open fields. Nevertheless Philip tar- 
ried from Thursday until Saturday, without gaining other advan- 

' The reason which Froissart assigns for this decision of Edward was 
that Ponthieu had belonged to Edward's mother. Compare p. 345 note 
with Longman, Life and Times of Edward III. , I, p. 254, note 1. 



1346] 



CRECT FIELD 



365 



Vadioourt "5 



tage than the accession of fresh troops to swell the size of his 
already unmanageable army. On Saturday, the 2Gth of August, 
long before sun-up the vast host was astir and soon streaming away 
towards Crecy; the men marching without order, a confused 
multitude of horse and foot, possessing but one prime military 
quality, an eager desire to come up with the foe. 

Six leagues away Edward and his men were quietly waiting on 
their hillside. All told they numbered about four thousand horse 

and ten thousand archers, besides an irregular body of 
order of Irish and Welsh footmen.^ The knights were dis- 

moiinted and drawn up in three divisions as pikemen. 
The first di- 
vision was 
placed at the 
foot of the 
slope and 
commanded 
by Edward, 
the king's 
eldest son, 
the beloved 
Black 
Prince, sup- 
ported by 
some of the 
ablest cap- 
tains in the 

English service. To the left was drawn up the second division, led 
by the earls of Arundel and Northampton. The third division, com- 
manded by the king in person, was marshalled on higher ground in 

1 The number of the French army was by this time probably not far 
from seventy thovisand men. The number of the English has long been a 
subject of dispute. Estimates have varied from 8,000, determined on the 
basis of the disposition of the several divisions as given by Froissart, and 
32,000 as given by the Italian Villani. The treasury accounts, recently 
discovered in the Herald's College, however, have now furnished the data 
for a satisfactory estimate. See Wrottesley, Crecy and Calais, from the 
Public Records. Reviewed by J. E. Morris in Eng. Hist. Review, 1899, p. 766. 




366 THE HUJTDRED YEARS' WAR [edwabdIII, 

the rear as a sort of reserve corps.' Before Gacli division the 

archers were thrown out in open order; the men in the successive 

ranks arranged like the pieces on a checker-board, so that each 

man should have an open space before him for the full play of his 

terrible bow. It is also stated, but upon questionable authority, 

that between the divisions were placed very small bombards "which 

with fire and a noise like God's thunder, threw little balls of iron 

to frighten the horses." ^ The Irish and Welsh, armed with long, 

ugly looking knives, hovered on the flanks and completed the array. 

About noon Edward's preparations were fully completed and 

he took up a position back of his third division near a windmill 

from which he could survey the field. Below him his 
The Battle. , . , . , n -,1 

Augiistse, men stood m their places, or sat on the ground witn 

their iron caps lying on the grass beside them; their 
coolness and quiet order in marked contrast with the confused 
chaos of martial valor that was rolling down upon them from 
Abbeville. When the afternoon was well on Philijj's men began to 
appear and soon all the lanes and avenues leading to the English 
position were choked with the increasing j)ress of men and horses. 
Philip had tried to get his troops into some order on the march, but 
had only increased the confusion, and when he arrived on the field 
he was fully determined to postpone the attack until the next day. 
But the sight of the English, sitting there on the hillside and look- 
ing down upon him with insolent indifference, was too much for his 
temper; and in an outburst of anger, he bade his marshals send 
forward the Genoese cross-bowmen and begin the battle. Of these 
cross-bowmen Pliilip had brought along some six thousand to 
engage the English archers. But the poor fellows were "quite 
fatigued, having marched on foot that day six leagues, completely 
armed, and carrying their cross-bows," and, to add to their 
discomfort, moreover, while they were getting ready for action, 
there came up a terrific thunder storm, accompanied by a drench- 
ing rain. When the storm had passed the Genoese were ready 
and advanced with a great shout. But the cross-bow was no 

' See Colby, Selections, p. 98, for Froissart's account of the battle. 
^Villani is the sole authority for the emplojaiient of these toy can- 
non by the English. Longman, I, p . 25G. 



1346] THE BATTLE OF CRECY 367 

match for the English long bow. The English archers also 
fully understood their work and, rising to their feet, coolly 
unlimbered their weapons and waited for the Genoese to come well 
within range. "Then they stepped forth one pace and let fly their 
arrows so hotly and so thick that it seemed snow." The long 
lines of cross-bowmen faltered, swayed, then surged backward and 
broke. Philip was furious and, turning to the men-at-arms who 
were supposed to support the Genoese, cried: "Kill me those 
runaway scoundrels." The order was the signal for the beginning 
of the main battle. The men-at-arms spurred forward their heavy 
horses, riding down the unfortunate Genoese, only in their turn 
to meet the murderous flight of cloth-yards. Soon the field was 
covered with writhing men and plunging horses. Then came the 
moment of the Irish and Welsh footmen, who darting under the 
rearing horses, and slashing at the huge bellies with their long 
knives, added not a little to the havoc and the wild confusion. 
Other bands of French knights came up, and passing around the 
first battle and skirting the hedge of archers, managed at last to 
get at the English men-at-arms. The press about the first divi- 
sion increased and there was danger that it would be borne away by 
sheer weight of superior numbers. From the height by the wind- 
mill the anxious watchers with the king saw the sea of tossing 
crests close ai'ound the little band which surrounded the Black 
Prince, and cried to Edward to lead them to the rescue. A mes- 
senger also came in hot haste asking the king to come to the help 
of the captains who were with the prince. But Edward saw that 
the moment had not yet come for leading out his reserve. "Let 
the boy win his spurs," he coolly replied, "that the honor may be 
his." So Edward waited ; moments dragged into hours, still the 
battle raged on. Philip had had no control of his army from the 
first, and apparently made no effort to hold his knights together or 
to hurl them in masses upon the English lines. The broken bands 
were left to return again and again to the onset, accomplishing 
prodigious feats of valor, but only to foam themselves away against 
the bristling wall of lances. Philip's brother fell with his sword 
in his hand. John, the blind old king of Bohemia, Philip's ally, 
asked to be led into the thick of the fray that he might strike one 



368 THE HUNDEED YEARS' WAR [edward 111. 

blow at the English, and there lie died. Night at last put an end 
to the useless carnage. Belated bands of French continued to 
arrive during the night and the next day there was some desultory 
fighting; but the French could not rally and the fighting rapidly 
degenerated into a mere slaughter of fugitives by the English. 
Philip, wounded in body and broken in spirit, had already fled to 
Amiens under cover of the night, leaving behind him on the 
field twelve princes of France, thirteen hundred knights, and six- 
teen thousand lesser folk.^ The English loss was inconsiderable. 
Once more France lay at Edward's mercy ; yet, instead of tak- 
ing advantage of his victory, he repeated the mistake which he had 

made after Sluys, spending the winter months of 1346 
Calais, 1346, and 1347 under the walls of Calais, patiently waiting 

for the burghers to eat up their store of provisions, 
while Philip was left to rally his shattered strength unmolested. 
France, however, was weaker now than in 1340, and a wholesome 
dread of meeting the English in battle had taken the place of the 
former vainglorious enthusiasm of her nobles. Yet, as the autumn 
months wore on, and it became evident that the terrible invader 
was to come no nearer, the people took fresh heart and began to 
turn their thought to the relief of the beleaguered garrison. 
Philip roused his old allies, the Scots, in the delusive hope of forcing 
Edward to return home to defend his northern counties; but the 
northern earls, Henry Seville and Ralph Percy, proved themselves 
amply able to hold the borders, meeting the Scots at Neville's cross, 
and beating them with great slaughter, taking King David himself. 

An attempt of the French to relieve Calais by water met 
ruhtis.Aii-' with no better success. At last in the spring Philip 

managed to get another army into the field; but he 
could no longer bring his troops to face the English archers, and 
after an ignominious retreat was compelled to leave the brave 
burghers to throw themselves on Edward's mercy. 

The first thought of Edward was of slaughter. The city had 
allowed its harbor to be used freely by the Channel pirates and had 
long proved a scourge to English commerce. He proposed, there- 

' For the several estimates given above see E. Maunde Thompson's 
Edition of Le Baker's Chronicle, pp. 259-262. 



1347] EFFECTS OF WAR ON" ENGLISH LIFE 369 

fore, to read its citizens a lesson which should not be soon forgot- 
ten. But better counsels prevailed, and he determined to 
make Calais an outpost of England on French soil. He first 
drove out the French who would not take the oath of allegiance, 
and filled their places with new colonists from England. He then 
established a market for tin, lead, and cloth; repaired the w-alls and 
settled within the city a powerful resident garrison. The town at 
once took on a new life, becoming the chief channel of English 
trade with the continent. It remained in English hands for two 
hundred and ten years, during the most of which it enjoyed an 
unexampled prosperity. 

When Edward returned to England in 1347 he was at the 

height of his glory and the idol of the hour. The spoils of war, 

the plunder of France, poured into the kingdom. "There 

The heiqlit of ^ , , . ^ • n . . ■, i ? 

EdwarcVs was no womaii, it was said, who had not got gar- 
ments, furs, feather beds, and utensils from the spoils of 
Calais and other foreign cities." The country forgot the earlier 
drain upon its resources. A new taste for articles of luxury and 
extravagance was awakened, and swept away even the 
ofm-mir^ sober-visaged clergy. It expressed itself in marvelous 
t^xm Engiviii gowus of great length, trimmed with furs, and stilf with 
embroideries; in hanging sleeves, so long that they could 
be tied behind the back ; in shoes with wonderfully pointed toes 
that had to be fastened to the knees with silver chains. It was 
the heyday of the furrier and the clothier. A single gown would 
cost the price of a duke's ransom. The king led in this extrav- 
agant foppery. He decorated a select band of his knights with a 
"blue garter," thus originating the famous order. He held 
tournaments without number, — as many as nineteen within a six- 
month, some of them lasting more than a fortnight. Ilither 
flocked the gay and frivolous court, to lead in the carnival and set 
the people wild in their mad chase after French and Italian fash- 
ions. The fondness of the people for these pageants became so 
extravagant that it was forbidden to hold them without the royal 
license; a permission, however, which it was never hard to secure. 
The chase also, hunting or hawking, lost nothing of its charm for 
the elegant idlers who surrounded the court. Vast tracts of land 



370 THE HUNDRED- years' WAR [edward III. 

were kept waste, and troops of gaily attired men and women swept 
by in wild rout in pursuit of the quarry, trampling down the crops 
of tlie peasantry and destroying the food supply of the hapless 
poor. 

The taste for extravagance was also revealed in the architec- 
ture of the period. The old pointed arch, which had supplanted 

the simple and massive architecture of the Normans, 
arcMtlfture ^'^^^'^^Y yielded to elaborate decoratioji, — the "decorated 

style. " The castles of the nobility changed from gloomy 
strongholds into elegant palaces, which vied with each other in the 
tapestries which hung from the walls or the exquisite carvings 
which ornamented beds, tables, and chairs. In London the houses 
of the tradesmen rose two and three stories high. Glass was also 
coming into use, though only the rich and the great could 
yet afford it. There were larders, too, batteries, and ward- 
robes, filled with endless supplies which were the pride of the 
housewife. 

In other less direct ways also the war had powerfully stimulated 
the development of the resources of the country. Edward had 

very early in the struggle felt the need of new sources 

effects of the of revenue. The knights were still regarded as the 
war, 

flower of the army, but recent wars had proved the 

value of archers, light cavalry, and footmen of various kinds, 
besides ships and other engines of war. The duty of feudal serv- 
ice, moreover, did not compel knight or yeoman to follow Edward 
over the seas in his foreign war. Such service could be carried on 
only by voluntary enlistment and this required money and much 
of it. To furnish a foundation, therefore, for the revenues which 
the war demanded, Edward sought to encourage both industry and 
commerce. His methods, however, were curiously arbitrary and 
inconsistent and, as the sequel proved, both false and harmful. 
Yet for a time he succeeded in stimulating powerfully the eco- 
nomic life of the nation. He ordered that foreign merchants be 
allowed to enter the country freely and sell their wares without in- 
terruption. He brought over weavers from Flanders and furnished 
a market for English wool at home. And when the people began 
to show an undue preference for foreign-made goods, he forbade 



1333-1348] THE BLACK DEATH _ 371 

them to wear any cloth not made in English towns. The nobles 
and the wealthy, however, he exempted from the law. To keep 
control of the wool trade, he forbade the exportation of English 
rams, and allowed the raw wool to be sold abroad only at author- 
ized ports, or staples. Sometimes he attempted to prevent the 
exportation of wool altogether. Sometimes he turned merchant 
himself and used the royal authority to control the market. In 
1338 he was given the right to purchase twenty thousand sacks, 
or half the wool of the kingdom, fixing the rate at £3 a sack. 
He "unloaded" at Antwerp for £30 a sack. He prevented 
competition by forbidding other merchants to sell until he had 
completed the transaction. A more harmful regulation for- 
bade the people to sell or the merchants to buy wool or other 
standard commodities at other places than regularly established 
markets, — the staples, — a measure designed solely to simplify 
the levying of duties. The people were also forbidden for a long 
period to trade with Scotland. Yet in spite of these arbitrary 
rulings of the government, the war created a vigorous demand for 
the products of all kinds of industry; wages were good; food was 
abundant; prices were steady and trade, secure in the prestige of 
England on the seas, flourished. 

Suddenly over all this prosperity the "Black Death" cast its 

shadow. This mysterious malady, it is thought, appeared first 

in China about the year 1333, and following the 

ThcBJack ° 

Death i?As, old trade routes extended steadily westward, reach- 
ing the eastern Mediterranean the year after Crecy. In 
January 1348 it broke out on the lower Ehone, In August it 
appeared in England. Its ravages were appalling; no part of 
the kingdom was exempt; no class was spared. The king's 
daughter and the archbishop of Canterbury were among the vic- 
tims of the first year. The hale and the hearty succumbed as 
readily as the weak and the infirm. In some parts of Yorkshire, 
one-half the priests perished; a noble testimony of their fidelity in 
the hour of the nation's trial. A nameless dread fell upon all 
classes. The nation put off its festal attire and sat in the pres- 
ence of its dead; nor were voices lacking to remind the people that 
such woe comes only to those who have sinned. 



372 THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR [ 



Edward III. 



Then the horror passed by, but the desolation remained. It 

was said that of the entire population one in three had perished. 

The laboring element naturally suffered most. Its 

Fatality of strength was shattered. Whole families had been 
Blacli Death. ° 

swept away ; in many manors rows of tenantless cot- 
tages, silent and forsaken, were all that remained to tell of the 
population that had disappeared. The life of the nation, however, 
had been so quickened by all the experiences of the century, its 
pulse was so strong and steady that prostration could not last 
long. Yet the symptoms of convalescence were hardly understood 
by the king or his advisers. The free life of the nation was fet- 
tered by restrictions upon labor and trade, designed no doubt with 
the best intent, but destined to bring new and unheard-of dis- 
orders in their train. 

At the opening of Edward III. 's reign, rural England appar- 
ently had not passed very far beyond the condition of the rural 

England of the eleventh century ; the manor was still 
Ruraiufcin the prevailing form of organization of the agricultural 
uthcentimj. community. I'lie village life was still simple and 

isolated ; although comforts were few, there was 
always plenty to eat and vagrancy was virtually unknown. The 
lord lived quietly in his manor, surrounded by his family and his 
household servants; fully occupied with the homely duties of his 
station. The great outer world broke in occasionally when some 
preaching friar or pardoner from Rome came that way, v;ith fresh 
stores of gossip from court or council, not the least popular of 
their wares. There were sabbaths and feast days also, when 
young and old made merry and joined in the rude old country 
sports. There were the great fairs too, whither the bailiffs 
brought their woolpacks, and whither the good wife went with 
"her man" to buy the supplies for the year to come. Some- 
times, also, when the work of the summer was done and the 
granaries were full, lord and villain, freeholder and artisan, clerk 
and scrivener might be seen drifting along the pleasant highways, 
entertaining eacli other by guileless tales and seeking the shrine 
of some neighboring saint, for the rest of their bodies and the 
good of their souls. 



EFFECTS OF THE BLACK DEATH 373 

Yet even when .Edward began liis reign these pleasant 

scenes were not without some signs of change. The long 

era of domestic peace which had followed the close of the 

Barons' Wars, and had hardly been broken by the 

Engibshrurai tronbles wliicli had attended the reign of the 

life. 

second Edward, the steady development of the cities, 
the growth of corporate privileges and the extension of economic 
activities into new fields, had not been without a direct and whole- 
some influence upon the manor and its tenants. This influence 
was manifesting itself in two very marked ways. First, the cus- 
tom was steadily prevailing of allowing the tenant to exchange his 
ordinary labor service into a regular money service, or rental; the 
lord on his part hiring such labor as he needed and paying regular 
wages. When the villain secured the jorivilege of paying a stated 
rent for his land in lieu of the ancient labor service, a memoran- 
dnm of the agreement was indorsed on the manor roll; a copy was 
given to the villain, who became a co^jyliolder; the land was known 
as a coinjliold. Second, with the increase of luxury the lord lost 
his taste for the old quiet life of the manor and preferred rather 
to rent the demesne outright with all that belonged to it in the 
way of farm buildings, implements, and stock. 

The first effect of the Hundred Years' War had been greatly 
to accelerate the changes which the long-continued tide of pros- 
perity had already set in motion. The people began to 
BUickDeath I'^g^rd luxury in dressing and living as something desir- 
able. Their needs, also, increased with the development 
of taste, and they became dissatisfied, restless, grasping, and hard. 
Then came the Black Death, and, by shattering the strength of 
the laboring class, struck directly at the basis of all this prosperity. 
Landlords could not get "hands" to save their rotting crops. In 
their distress they competed with each other in offering higher 
wages. This in turn reacted upon the villains who still held land 
under the old service tenure and who saw themselves thereby pro- 
hibited from taking advantage of the general increase in wages. 
They became dissatisfied and refused to work for their lords. 
Smaller tenants left their crops standing and went out to work for 
their richer neighbors. Land sank in value, and tenants who held 



374 THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR [edwa«d ill. 

by copyliold, could no longer keep np their rental and pay the pre- 
vailing ruinous wages for help. 

The distress and confusion which now fell most heavily upon 
the landlords, attracted the attention of the government, and the 

king attempted to remedy the evils which he did not 
Interference i / n • i 

of govern- understand. SSeeing that a great part of the people 

and principally of laborers is dead of^ the plague, and 
that some seeing the necessity of masters and the scarcity of serv- 
ants, will not work unless they receive exorbitant wages, ... we 
have ordained, . . . that every able-bodied man and woman of our 
kingdom, . . . not living by trading or having of his, or her 
own, wherewithal to live, . . . shall if so required, serve anotlier 
for the same wages as were the custom in the twentieth year of 
our reign." The parliament who represented only the landholding 
class and regarded the alleviation of the distress of the landlords of 
far more importance than the matter of justice to the laborers, 

supported the king by passing the famous Statute of 
iMbourers Lahourers,^ in which an attempt was made to prescribe 

a regular scale of wages, corresponding to the rates paid 
before the appearance of the plague. The laborer who refused to 
work at such wages was to be put in the stocks. If he went into 
another shire in search of higher wages, he was to be branded in 
the forehead. These laws, harsh and cruel as they were senseless, 
only increased the sufferings of the poor and did not help the 
landlords. Yet they were reenacted again and again ; the penalties 
each time increasing in severity. Still the suffering and the con- 
fnsion continued. Then it dawned upon the king and his econo- 
mists that the cost of living had also risen, that not only had the 
cost of labor advanced but the cost of everything that labor pro- 
duced was also advancing, and that a man could not be expected to 
accept for a week's work wages which would not keep himself and 
his family for a day. So the king turned his attention to the 
regulation of prices. In this he was also guided by the popular 
prejudices of the hour. He turned upon the "forestallers," men 
who purchased in large quantities to sell later at retail. The people 
suspected the forestallers and hated them as they suspect and hate 

1 See Lee, Source Book, pp. 306-208. 



1349-1369] ECONOMIC DISORDERS 375 

the promoters of trusts to-day and for the same reason; they 
believed that the forestallers aimed to exclude other tradesmen 
from buying, so that they might control the markets themselves, 
"thirsting after wicked gain," "Forestalling" therefore was for- 
bidden by law under pain of the pillory. Merchants also were for- 
bidden to bid against each other in the fish market, lest they should 
raise the price of fish. The king and his parliament might as 
well have legislated against the law of gravitation, provided they 
knew what the law of gravitation was. The discontent of the 
laboring element only increased; the hostility of landowner and 
landless hardened into hatred; and since the landowner made the 
laws and wielded the power of the government, the landless man, 
as in the France of 1789, only waited for a leader and an occasion, 
to begin the burning of chateaus and the massacre of the noblesse 
and their bailiffs. In the meantime the Black Death came and 
went again; first in 1349, again in 1369; each time leaving an 
aftermath of economic and social disorder. In vain the reeves or 
manor stewards attempted to force men to work for the wages 
prescribed by law. Their crops were in the field and must be 
gathered. They themselves were the first to weaken and seek labor 
at any price. In vain they sought to exact to the uttermost the 
services of those who still lived under the older system. In vain 
the government took fishmongers and forestallers in hand. 
Prices continued to rise, and wages continued to increase, and the 
interference of the government only exasperated the people and 
laid up trouble for the future. 

The war had now languished for eight years since the fall of 
Calais. There had been no formal peace, not even a truce; yet 
Influence of ^^ither nation had the heart to renew the struggle in 
^uponthT the presence of the Black Death or the economic or 
■war. social distresses which had followed it. Neither party, 

however, had ceased to intrigue; a bitter partisan strife, also, smoul- 
dered in Brittany where the question of succession was not yet 
settled; open war occasionally flickered up on the Gascon border. 
In 1350 the Spanish, probably incited by French intrigue, 
attempted a descent upon the English coast. Edward went out 
with his fleet, and in the brilliant victory of "L'Espagnols sur 



376 THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR [ 



Edward III. 



mer" off Slays, in which the feat of John Paul Jones off Flam- 
borough Head was repeated three several times, once by Edward 
himself, again vindicated his title of "King of the Sea." 

A week before this famous action Philip VI. had died and 

John of Normandy had succeeded him. Edward announced his 

willingness to renounce his claim to the French crown. 

Renewal of \f John would cede him Gascony in full sovereignty. 

the war, 1355. •' g j 

But John rejected the offer; and both sides prepared 
again for the active renewal of the war. 

Edward planned to strike France in three different places at 
once. One army was to land in Brittany and assist the Montforts , 

a second army led by the king was to descend upon 
Norihcrn Normandy, where he expected help from the young 

Charles of Navarre, son-in-law of the French king, a 
dangerous and reckless youth of twenty-three who had quarreled 
with John over his daughter's dowry, and was perfectly willing to 
annoy his royal father-in-law by assisting Edward, although his 
title to the French crown, even according to Edward's way of 
reckoning, was better than Edward's. Nothing, however, came 
of either of these expeditions, and Edward returned shortly to repel 
a new invasion of the Scots. 

In the meantime the third expedition, under the young Prince of 
Wales, had landed at Bordeaux and begun a systematic plundering 

of the valley of the upper Garonne, passing by the cities, 
campaiansof ];,^t cutting a wide swath through the open country of 

the Black ° o i j 

Prince 1355, Lang'uedoc to the Mediterranean, — a veritable "march 

1356. o ' 

to the sea." The successes of the first year led the 
Black Prince to attempt to repeat the experiment the next year 
on the Loire. He advanced across Poitou, as in the pre- 
vious year ravaging the countryside and leaving a desolate 
wilderness behind him. All went well, until four miles from Poi- 
tiers, where the prince found himself confronted by a French 
army which outnumbered him seven to one. He was far from the 
Gascon frontier; his army was not only encumbered with jji'isoners 
and spoil, but all told did not number more than twelve thousand 
men. To retire was impossible; to fight was only to invite the 
destruction of thousands of brave men to no purpose. He offered, 



1356] 



POITIERS 



377 



Battle of POITIERS 

Sept. Ig, 1356 

I I English 1st 2 ositlon 
C_ 2 English 2 id position 
•••• English Archers 



therefore, to surrender his prisoners and his spoil, and pledge his 
word not to fight again for seven years, if he might be allowed to 
withdraw. But John, who now at last saw an English army within 
his power, refused to grant any terms other than the unconditional 
surrender of the English prince and one hundred of his knights. 
At this the prince and his knights determined, ratlier than to lay 
down their arms in an unknightly way, to sell their lives as dearly 
as possible. 

The English with their usual skill, seeking to take all the 
advantage which a strong position might afford them, had drawn 
up their array on _ _ _ 

some high ground 
west of the farm of 
Maupertuis, pro- 
tected in front by a 
dense hedge which 
was broken in the 
middle by what 
was probably an or- 
dinary farming 
road. On the right 
the hill, or plateau, 
descended to a 
marsh drained by 
a small stream, be- 
yond which the ground again rose abruptly and was covered 
thickly with briars and bushes. The combination of 
TheEngiwh hedsfc, marsh, and rough ground beyond made an 

formation. o ' ' . 

excellent cover for the English archers who were 
thus protected effectually from the enemy's horse. The English 
knights, with the exception of a small band reserved for skirmishing, 
were dismounted as at Crecy and drawn up in three divisions 
which after several maneuvers were finally arranged so that Salis- 
bury held the left wing, Warwick the center, and the Black Prince 
the right where he could support the archers in the marsh. 

King John was a better soldier than his father, but he was no 
match for a Plantagenet. Some of his knights, conspicuously a 




378 THE HUNDEED YEAKS' WAR [edwaed ill. 

Scotchman by the name of Dndley, thought that they had dis- 
covered the secret of the English strength, which tliey ascribed not 
Thehatti of ^^ ^^® archery, but to the fact that the English men- 
Sentember at-arms Were accustomed to fight on foot, and per- 
19, 1356. suaded John to dismount his knights also, reserving 

only a small company of three hundred mounted French and a 
band of mounted Germans who were to ride down the English 
archers. With these men John began the battle in a vain attempt 
to break through the hedge. Again he attempted to storm the 
English position, sending forward the first division of his army 
under the command of his eldest son, Charles Duke of Normandy. 
The English arrow-flight riddled the French lines, and the division 
melted away; Charles and some eight hundred of his knights 
mounted their horses and fled from the field. The second division, 
under command of the king's brother, Philip Duke of Orleans, also 
lost heart and, apparently without striking a blow, marched from 
the field, leaving John with his third and last division to meet the 
counter attack of the whole English army led by the Black Prince 
in person. John himself fought like a lion, but he was outgen- 
eraled by Prince Edward, and his men were outfought by the Eng- 
lish. At last, taken both in front and rear, the third division also 
gave way. John refused to flee and with his youngest son Philip, 
who fought by his side, fell into the hands of the English. The 
battle had opened at nine o'clock, and by noon John was a cajDtive 
in the tent of the Black Prince. 

The case of France was now pitiable enough. The disaster of 

Poitiers had come, not at the close of an era of prosperity, but after 

fifteen years of as bitter and cruel war as has ever 

France after desolated wcstem Europe. Moreover, from the first, 

Poitiers. ^ ' _ ' 

France had been um'formly unsuccessful in the war. 
She had suffered while her enemy had waxed fat and insolent. 
Then she had hardly ceased mourning for her dead after the 
disaster of Crecy, when the Black Death came creeping upon her 
from the south, affiicting her even more sorely than it afflicted 
England, for she was far less able to endure the scourge. It was 
upon this already desolate land that the disaster of Poitiers had 
fallen. The best of the nobility had been slain or taken; the king 



1356-1359] FRANCE AFTER POITIERS 379 

was a prisoner, and the government demoralized. The Dauphin/ 
who was ' hastily appointed regent, was an untried youth, his 
magnificent ability as yet unknown, and men feared to trust him. 
The riffraff of the two armies that had fought at Poitiers, troops 
of disbanded soldiers, infested the highways, and, forming them- 
selves into "free companies," fastened upon the countryside, liv- 
ing by plunder and rapine. The knights and nobles, also, who had 
been captured in the battle, having bargained with their captors for 
their ransom, returned to wrest the money from their peasant ten- 
ants, already distracted by present sufferings beyond measure. The 
wildest disorder prevailed. In 1358 the peasantry, the Jacquerie, 
rose against their lords, and to the fierce plundering of a lawless sol- 
diery, the attacks of the English, and the destitution and misery 
which had followed plague and famine, were now added the yet deeper 
horrors of a servile war. The regent summoned the States-Gen- 
eral, but only to increase the confusion by precipitating a war of 
classes, — the nobles and clergy against the Third Estate. Petrarch, 
who visited France about this time, wrote of the universal desola- 
tion which confronted him: "I could not believe that this was 
the same kingdom which I had seen so rich and flourishing. 
ISTothing presented itself to my eyes but a fearful solitude, an 
extreme poverty, land uncultivated, homes in ruins, even the 
neighborhood of Paris manifested everywhere marks of destruc- 
tion and conflagration. The streets are deserted; the roads over- 
grown with weeds; the whole is a vast solitude." 

In the meantime John had been treated right royally by his 
English captors; his entry into London was a pageant. Negotia- 
tions were opened and he agreed to cede to England the 
Theimr entire Western Seaboard of France including a district 

reneived, 1359. ° 

nearly equal in extent to the original Angevin domin- 
ions. But the Estates were in no mood to accept terms so humili- 
ating, and promptly rejected them. Edward prepared for a 
renewal of the war. He first, however, took advantage of the 

^ In 1349 Philip VI. bought the domain of Humbert, Dauphin of 
Vienna, and ceded the district to Claarles, his grandson, who took the 
name of the Dauphin, afterward the established title of the eldest son of 
the King of France. 



380 THE HUIS'DEED YEAES' WAR [ 



Edward III. 



death of Edward Balliol to put his relations with Scotland npon a 
more secnre basis by releasing David, who had been in captivity 
since the day of Neville's Cross, and acknowledging again the inde- 
pendence of the kingdom. The Scots of course had to pay a round 
ransom for the return of their king and a second sum in addition 
in lieu of the claim which Edward renounced. In 1359 Edward 
was ready to begin operations on the continent, and with an 
army of one hundred thousand men started from Calais to march 
upon Eheims with the idea of having himself formally crowned 
king of France. He could not hope to feed such an army in a 
country already thrice a desert, so he carried with him his own 
provision train of eight thousand carts. The march was like a 
gala day parade. The Daupliin shut himself up in Paris and left 
his people to take care of themselves. Edward threw his vast host 
around Rheims and waited under its walls until January 13G0. 
Then he was compelled to raise the siege, for his eight thousand 
carts had now been eaten empty. He next turned upon Paris where 
he fared worse than at Rheims. The winter was one of great 
severity and the English ere long were suffering more than the 
people within the city. Then at last, at the earnest entreaty of 
Po23e Innocent VI., the Dauphin consented to sue for peace; but it 
was not until Edward had been fairly driven off by famine and had 
begun his march toward Brittany. 

The messengers of the regent, following the trail of starving 
men and horses, overtook Edward at Chartres. He was ready 
for peace; he could no longer blind himself to the vanity of 
attempting to unite the two crowns, and agreed to renounce all 
claims to the throne of France and to the ancient possessions of 
his house north of the Loire. The French king was to renounce 
on his part all suzerainty over the lands south of the Loire which 
had once belonged to Eleanor. Ponthieu with Calais were also to 
be ceded in full sovereignty to the English king, and John was to 
be ransomed for 3,000,000 crowns. Tiie treaty was signed at 
Bretigny, near Chartres, May 8, 1360. 



CHAPTER IV 



the decline of je^dwakd iii. second stage of hundred 

years' war 

EDWARD in., 1360-1377 

FAMILY OF EDWARD III. 

Edward III. = Pliilippa of Hainault, 
k. 1337-1377 I d. 1369. 



Edward 

the Black Prince, 

Duke of 

Aquitaine, 

d. 1376 

I 

RICHABD II. 
k. 1377-1399 



William, 
d. 1335 



Lionel- 
Duke of 
Clarence, 
d. 1368 
I 
Philippa 
m. Edmund 
Mortimer, Earl 
of March 



I 

John of Gaunt 

m. Blanclie of 

Lancaster, 

d. 1399 

I 
Henry IV. 
k. 1399-1413 



Edmund, 
Duke of York, 

d. 1403 



Thomas, 

Duke of 

Gloucester, 

d. 1397 



Edward, 
Duke of 
York, 
d. 1415 



Richard, 
Earl of 
Cambridge, 
d. 1415 



The last years of Edward III.'s reign were fall of trouble. 

Edward himself was called upon to pay the penalty which nature 

so often exacts of prematurely developed mental and 

Personal ^ ± 

decline of physical powers; he was an old man long before his 

Edward. ^. mf , •■,,• ,. i 

time. The brilliant successes of the war, moreover, 
had encouraged the baser elements of a nature which was by birth 
mean, selfish, and shallow ; nor could the glamour of court pageantry 
long hide the spuriousness of his character from the people, or 
conceal the fact that their glorious Edward was fading into a con- 
temptible little old man, decrepit in body, small of soul, and weak 
of will, the prey of politicians and court parasites. 

The nation also was now face to face with the inevitable results 
of long-continued war. The people were hardening under 
burdens which they could not bear. They were 
beginning to regard the landlord, once their patron and 
protector, as their worst enemy. The titled clergy 
special objects of their hatred; not the humble 
priest and the friar, who were poor and suffered as the people 

381 



Growing dis 
content of 
the people. 



were 



the 



382 SECOND STAGE OF HUNDRED YEARS' WAR [edward in. 

suffered, but the mighty bishops and abbots, who controlled the 
government, made the laws, ground their tenants, and hoarded 
their wealth, or worse, sent it off to Eome to buy favors and pre- 
ferment, yet lifted not a finger to relieve the distress about them. 
The people, moreover, were not without leaders. New and strange 
voices were raised; startling doctrines were taught, — the rumbling 
of approaching upheaval. 

In the year 1360 all this was still below the surface. Edward's 

power was at zenith; his revenues were double what they had been 

when he ascended the throne thirty-three years before; 

power at his fleets rode the Channel; his armies had shattered 
zenith, 1360. 

the military might ot .b ranee and one-halt ot her ter- 
ritories had been added to his kingdom. The magnificence of 
Edward's court had fully kept pace with his military triumphs. 
It was the most splendid in Europe. The king of France was his 
prisoner-guest. The king of Scotland waited upon him in person 
to secure some modification of the hard terms of his ransom. 
The king of Cyprus came from the distant east to secure the help 
of the mightiest captain of Christendom against the Turk. 

It was not long, however, before the first shadows began to fall 

across this fine pageant, dulling its glamour and filling the minds of 

the wise with foreboding. The Treaty of Bretigny 

Failure of i , » ., ^ ■ o 

the Treaty of provcd a Complete failure as a basis lor a permanent 
jieace. The French people, sore burdened and dis- 
traught, could not raise the enormous ransom which had been 
pledged for the return of their king, and left him to die in exile. 
The other terms of the treaty also were never carried out. 
Edward had promptly organized the newly-acquired territories as 
the Duchy of Aquitaine and had installed the Black Prince as 
duke, but the French king had never formally renounced his sover- 
eignty, neither had Edward renounced his claim to the French 
crown. But the most serious obstacle to the success of the 
treaty lay in the temper of the Aquitanians themselves. It was 
too late to dismember France. The new subjects of Edward 
regarded themselves as a part of France, and when they found that 
they had been abandoned by their king and turned over to a for- 
eign master, a bitter sorrow seized them. "We will obey the Eng- 



1360-1367] PEDEO THE CKtJEL 383 

lish with, our lips," said the good people of Rochelle, "but our 

hearts shall never be moved toward them." Geographically 

Aquitaine belonged to the great political system which the middle 

age was slowly but surely building up abont the old Duchy of 

Francia, and there was no reason, other than the arbitrary decision 

of battle, for annexing this region to England. The fourteenth 

century was the era for the growing of nations ; the time for the 

building of empires was not yet. 

The Treaty of Bretigny, therefore, in the nature of things, was 

only a truce and a very uncertain truce at that. Not so readily 

was England to shake herself loose from the complica- 
Pedro the 
Cruel in tions whicli the unfortunate war with France had 

entailed; not so easily could she escape the penalty 
which a war of conquest always brings in its train. The old 
struggle continued to rage in Brittany, and when in 1365 a crush- 
ing defeat of the French party definitely settled the succession in 
favor of John de Montforfc, a new storm center suddenly devel- 
oped south of the Pyrenees. Pedro, known by the ugly but 
well merited nickname of "the Cruel," a crowned madman, had 
been ruling Castile for fifteen years. He had conducted his reign 
like a Dahomey chief rather than a Christian prince; destroying 
his leading nobles, assassinating his brothers, and poisoning his 
wife, the gentle and unofi:euding Blanche of Bourbon. By this 
last outrage Pedro had bitterly offended Charles V. the new king 
of France, whose wife was the sister of Blanche. He had 
already aroused the church, for he had not scrupled to 
put bishops to death, and, to complete his measure of wicked- 
ness, had entered into a formal league with the Mohammedan 
ruler of Granada. Pedro had thus raised up two powerful 
enemies, who might well think that any means would be justified 
in putting down this Spanish Caligula, and when the Castilian 
nobles found a leader in Henry of Trastamara, the illegitimate 
brother of Pedro, who by the law of the church could not inherit a 
crown, the pope had removed the bar by legalizing the birth, and 
Charles had furnished an army by authorizing liis famous captain 
Bertrand du Guesclin to collect the "free companies" and lead 
them into Spain. Pedro, who did not dare to trust his subjects to 



384 SECOND STAGE OF HUNDRED YEARS* AVAR [edward ill. 

fight for him, fled before the storm to seek comfort from the 
enemy of France. 

In an evil hour the Black Prince received Pedro in his court at 

Bordeaux. Wise counsellors, like Sir John Chandos, advised him 

to have nothinsr to do with the evil-minded king. But 

The Black . , . , . ° ^ i n -, , 

Prinpe tlie chivalric nature ot the duke was touched by the 

misfortunes of a fellow prince. He also saw in the 
irregularity connected with the succession of the base-born Henry 
of Trastamara a threat to the rights of royalty based upon legiti- 
mate succession, and persuaded Edward III. and the parliament 
to consent to a proposal to restore Pedro to his throne. The 
prince met Henry and his allies at Navarrete, and added another to 
the series of brilliant victories which England has associated with 
his name; "a victory, however, of which every decent Englishman 
should be heartily ashamed." The generous and gentle Henry of 
Trastamara fled to Aragon, and the ferocious Pedro was once more 
established in Castile. When in Aquitaine the royal refugee had 
agreed to pay the wages of those who should enlist under the 
Black Prince and had pledged the treasures of his kingdom. But, 
now that he had his own again, he showed no disposition to keep 
his promise, and left the prince and his army "not only without 
money, but absolutely without food, on the burning plains of 
Castile.'" Here the Gascons died of famine and pestilence, while 
the miscreant king amused himself with fetes, wholesale slaughter, 
and assassination. At last "the gallant defender of royal rights" 
was glad to leave Spain, "with the loss of his soldiers 
Septcmhcr, .^^^^([ Qf ]-,ig money and of his health, befooled and cheated 
in one of the worst causes in which English blood and 
English treasure have ever been squandered on the continent of 
Europe."^ He had won new glory, but he had incurred a serious 
debt, with the odium, also, of fighting in a bad cause. 

Henry of Trastamara returned to Castile the next year, caught 
his brother in a trap and slew him; and thus the matter ended as 
far as the civil war in Spain was concerned. Not so the Black 
Prince; after straining every resource to meet the obligations 
incurred by the war, the best that he could do for the still unpaid 
' Burke, History of Spain, I, j). 311. 



1368, 1369] THE HEARTH-TAX 385 

"companies," was to offer them half pay with license to levy the 

rest on the subjects of the French king. But the young duke 

could not so easily satisfy the claims of his merce- 

Thehearth- . , „ , t pi 

taxandthe naries ; only a lew took advantage of the permission to 

Aquitanians. , -r^ • in- -i 

enter ±irencli territory, and the prnice was compelled 
to cast about for some new method of raising money. In an 
evil hour he was persuaded to propose the levy of a hearth-tax, 
the most vexatious and unjust of all methods of taxation, since it 
fell upon the humblest Aquitanian f)easaiit who cooked his scanty 
meal on his hearth fire, as well as on the rich landlord. The 
nobles of Aquitaine refused to consent to the levy, and when the 
duke persisted in his demand, they appealed to the king of France 
to protect them. Charles, always wise and sure-footed, had no 
intention of committing himself to a renewal of the war with the 
English until he was certain of his ground. So he waited a year 
to give the Aquitanians a chance to know their own mind and to 
prepare himself and his people for the struggle. Then he resumed 
the overlordship of Aquitaine, and summoned the duke to Paris to 
answer the complaints of his vassals. The prince replied with 
characteristic spirit that he would come, but only with helmet on 
head and sixty thousand men at his b:ick. The response of Charles 
was a declaration of war, contemptuously sent by a kitchen scullion. 
The English soon found that they had a new kind of antagonist 
to deal with in the young French king; a man who despised 

chivalry and its nonsense, and saw no glamour in war; 
TheFrcnch yvhosc bodilv infirmities forbade him to lead armies, but 

adopt new J ' 

methods of ^}^q kuew men, and from the quiet seclusion of his castle 
with unerring wisdom observed events and selected his 
instruments. The French king saw, moreover, that in any cam- 
paign upon his own territory tlie invader must sooner or later 
retire baffled and beaten, if only he could be prevented from fight- 
ing battles. He also fully realized the uselessness of continuing to 
pit feudal levies against the trained soldiers of England, and 
steadily substituted the professional soldier for the feudal knight; 
placing in command not his dukes and counts, whose claim to 
preferment rested merely upon their social alliances, but trained 
warriors like Bertrand du Guesclin, men who were conspicuous for 



38G SECOND STAGE OF HUiirDRED YEARS' WAR [edward HI. 

tried abilities rather than for high birth, and who thoroughly 
understood their business of war. For this modern method of war 
vast sums were needed; these soldiers of fortune had to be paid in 
hard gold; yet the shrewd business ability of Charles did not fail 
him. He understood the art of economizing and getting the 
most out of his limited resources, as well as the art of find- 
ing men. 

In 1370 the French entered Aquitaine; the Black Prince with 
shattered health and wasted treasury, with the country largely in 

sympathy with the invaders, could only look on, while 
The Fr'ench -i i. -j ' j ? 

reconquest the disafi^ected towns opened their gates and received 

of Aquitaine. -r^i . t.,i ,i • t-,« 

J^rench garrisons. liut when the episcopal city oi 
Limoges surrendered, he roused himself from his sick bed with 
the desperate resolve to retake the traitorous city, and although 
he was forced to conduct the siege from his litter, he inspired his 
troops with such energy that in spite of the heroic efforts of both 
garrison and citizens the city fell. No mercy was shown to the 
unfortunate inhabitants; men, women, and children were put to 
the sword. A body of knights who had determined to sell their 
lives dearly, won the compassion of Edward and were spared for 
their knighthood ; an act of spurious mercy, fully in keeping with 
the debased chivalry of the fourteenth century. The "Mirror of 
Chivalry" could spare knighthood, but look on with cold indiffer- 
ence while the women and little children, v/ho had never given any 
offense, sobbed for mercy at his feet. The massacre at Limoges 
has no rival in civilized warfare. Even the Sepoys at Cawnpore 
might plead their wrongs and the teaching of centuries of barbar- 
ism. The recapture of Limoges was the last exploit of the Black 
Prince. The next year he returned to England a dying man. 

The war in the meanwhile continued; the prestige of the Eng- 
lish faded; their power in the newly conquered provinces dis- 
integrated. Their armies marched hither and thither, 
Enoii'sh but 110 battles were fought. Cities that consented to 

"blackmail" were spared; the rest were plundered and 
burned. A bitter hatred, fed upon such scenes as those of 
Limoges, took possession of the population and made them ready 
to receive even the ruffians who followed du Guesclin as saviors. 



1372] DISASTER AT EOCHELLE 387 

111 1372 Edward sent out an expedition under the command of 

Earl John of Pembroke, who had been appointed lieutenant of 

Aquitaine in consequence of the declining health of the 

June22,'23, Black Prince. Pembroke proposed to invade France 

2372, 

bj way of Eochelle; but he was so long in getting 
started, that his plans were well known to the French, and when at 
last he reached his destination, he found a powerful Spanish fleet 
lying in wait for him in the harbor. The English fought with 
great bravery, but their ships were outclassed by the huge Spanish 
deckers, and after a two days' fight, their fleet was sunk, and Pem- 
broke and his surviving captains were loaded with chains and borne 
away to the prisons of Spain. The English had met with no such 
reverse since Edward III. began his reign; the supremacy on the 
seas, which they had enjoyed since Sluys, was at an end; they 
could no longer support their armies in the field, and a French 
invasion of England was a possibility of the near future. This 
was Henry of Trastamara's requital for the support which England 
had given to Pedro the Cruel. 

The disaster at Eochelle, the reports of other reverses in 
Aquitaine following each other in quick succession, roused Edward 
to make one more attempt before the summer should end to relieve 
his distressed garrisons, and on the 30th of August he himself 
embarked with the Black Prince at Southampton. The fieet con- 
sisted of four hundred ships and had on board four thousand men- 
at-arms and ten thousand archers. The equipment had cost the 
government the incredible sum of £90,000. But after five weeks 
of useless struggling against contrary winds, Edward returned to 
port and the expedition upon which so much had been expended 
was abandoned. The people, whose consciences rested none too 
easily under the discouragement of repeated misfortune, saw in the 
contrary winds a direct interposition of Providence. God they 
said was now plainly for the king of France. 

In the autumn and winter of 1372 the French continued to 
reduce the strongholds of Aquitaine, and in the spring du Guesclin 
invaded Brittany with a large army. The English made new 
exertions to fit out a relief expedition and finally saw it depart in 
June under the command of John of Gaunt, the king's fourth 



388 SECOND STAGE OF HUNDRED YEARS' WAR [edward in, 

soil. The danger of approaching Aquitaine by sea was now so 

great that it was determined to land at Calais and attempt to 

relieve the southern garrisons by marching across 

Gaunt in France. Charles, "that mysterious man, who never 

France, 1373. ' '' ' 

took the field himself, nor allowed his armies to fight 
if they could avoid it," simply strengthened his castles and 
watched the enemy, giving strict orders to his generals under no 
conditions to hazard a battle. The French, also, burned over the 
country before the invading army, leaving nothing to feed man 
or beast. These measures were heroic but were fully justified by 
the results. The march of the English resembled a retreat. 
The winter caught them amid the mountains of Auvergne, and 
when at last they reached Bordeaux, all that was left of the "mag- 
nificent army," which had marched out of Calais six months 
before, was a horde of miserable fugitives, disorganized and dis- 
heartened. They had marched across France, a distance of six 
hundred miles; they had endured incredible hardships, and all to 
no purpose. The English could send no other reinforcements; 
in a few months only Bordeaux and Bayonne remained in their 
hands. The next year they were glad to accept a truce, which 
continued in force theoretically until Edward's death. 

Thus the tables had been completely reversed; the prestige of 
the English had not only been swept away, but they had been left 

with hardly a foothold, where a few years before they 
of Enuiiah had been the unquestioned masters. Their govern- 
?"*^*' 'fi* • nient, moreover, was bankrupt and their splendid king 
fast sinking into the gloom of a dishonored old age. These 
changes were not the result of a mere freak of fortune. France 
was now better governed than England; her administration better 
ordered; her armies better equipped and better disciplined; her 
king was a better man. The frugality, almost parsimony of his 
court was in marked contrast with the wasteful prodigality of 
Edward's court; the quiet atmosphere which pervaded the sol- 
itary castles where he met his counsellors and planned his cam- 
paigns or directed the administration of his kingdom, with the 
bickering and intrigue, the wholesale corruption and general demor- 
alization which surrounded Edward. 



1359, 1369] FACTIONS OF ENGLISH COURT 389 

The good Queen Philippa had died in 1369, and soon after her 
deabh Edward had become blindly infatuated with a young woman 

of her household named Alice Ferrers. He lavished 
ization^T"'^ upon her the late queen's jewels. He paraded her 
Edward's through the streets attired as "The Lady of the San." 

He suffered her to interfere in affairs of state and sit 
with the royal judges when she wished to influence their decisions. 
He allowed her to lead him into the wildest extravagance, while 
she secretly leagued with other favorites, as avaricious and shame- 
less as herself, to speculate in the claims of the king's disheartened 
creditors. The adult children of the king, who ought to have 
steadied his steps to the grave, gave him little support. The 
broken health of the Black Prince had compelled him to retire 
from public life. Lionel Duke of Clarence, a third son,^ had died 
the year before Queen Philippa. John of Gaunt, the fourth son, 
instead of protecting his father did not scruple to join with Alice 
Ferrers and the other parasites of the court in order to wheedle 
favors out of the doting old king. 

The high offices of the state were in the hands of the clergy; 
but they had lost the sympathy of the people and had roused the 

bitter hostility of the baronage, and particularly of the 
offjie^courL creatures who surrounded the king. To this latter ' 
Lancaster/^ class belonged John of Gaunt. This powerful but 

unprincipled man had married Blanche, the daughter 
and heiress of Henry of Lancaster, and with the titles and vast 
estates he had also succeeded to the traditions of this ancient 
house. He was the recognized leader of the old conservative 
wing of the baronage, and was in full sympathy with its narrow 
class feeling; he saw nothing to be commended in the rising power 
of the commons, and scoffed at the new ideas which had found 
lodgment in the constitution; he did all that he could, moreover, 
to develop hostility to the clergy, begrudging their wealth, and 
claiming for himself and his friends a monopoly of the public 
offices of the kingdom. Such a man could never become a great 
popular leader. The people missed that high-toned self-respect 
which had characterized Earl Simon, and refused to trust the 

* Edward's sacond son William had died in 1335. 



390 SECOND STAGE OF HUNDRED TEARS' WAR [edward III. 

prince even when he tried to win their favor. Yet John of Gaunt 
was an exceedingly dangerous man. A powerful reactionary spirit 
was everywhere quickening into action, aud although no one 
credited him with any patriotic motive, he was allowed to put him- 
self at the head of the reaction, confuse its real interests, and use 
its influence to further the factional strifes of the court. 

Opposed to this Lancastrian court party was a second faction 
of the barons whose natural leader was Edmund Mortimer, the earl 

of March, the great-grandson of that Roger Mortimer 
Jacmn^of^^ who had been hanged at the Elms for his misdeeds in 
The^mri^of the early years of Edward's reign. He had married 
March. Philippa, the daughter of the late earl of Clarence, and 

had the interests of his wife and son to maintain against the ambi- 
tions of John of Gaunt. He was, therefore, the natural ally of 
the clerical party, represented by the chancellor, William of 
Wykeham, the bishop of Winchester, who as head of the govern- 
ment was the special object of the enmity of John of Gaunt and 
the favorites. 

Independently of these factions of the court there had also ' 
grown up in the nation at large a vigorous and energetic party 

whose purpose was ecclesiastical reform; who protested 
'^artv'^'^^''^ not against the church but the abuses of the church ; 

not against the clergy but against their useless wealth, 
their extravagance, their worldly ambition and heartless indiffer- 
ence to the sufferings of the poor; not against the papacy as an 
institution, but against the interference of the pope in English 
affairs, and the indirect taxation of the English church through 
the "provisions" which the pope was still in the habit of making 

for his Italian servants. In 1351 parliament had passed 
Proviso7-s, the Statute of Provisors, which made the recipient of a 
Prcemunire, papal provision liable to imprisonment and forfeiture. 

In 1353 the even more important Statute of FrcB- 
munire had directly attacked the appellate jurisdiction of the 
Roman Curia by making it a serious crime for any English- 
man to appeal from the decision of an English court to a 
foreign court. In 13GG, also. Urban V. had very unwisely 
put a new weapon in the hands of the reform party by making a 



1366-1372] DISMISSAL OF WYKEHAM 391 

formal demand upon the English king for the payment of the 
tribute which John had once pledged to Innocent III. During 
the great part of Henry III.'s reign this tribute had been paid, 
though not regularly. Edward I. had refused, but Edward II. 
had resumed the payment. Edward III. had again refused, 
and for thirty years the pope had missed his annual gift of 1,000 
marks from the English king. The pope was now unwise enough to 
send to England a demand for the renewal of the tribute and for the 
payment of the arrears in full. The moment was not well chosen. 
The English government was burdened with debt; the people 
were restless and dissatisfied ; a powerful and growing party among 
the nobility were jealous of the monopoly of the high offices of 
state by the clergy, and were eagerly waiting for some pretext for 
open attack. The king submitted the pope's claim to parliament, 
and although parliament made short work of it by denying the 
right of King John to enter into any such compact, the discussion 
aroused was most unfortunate because it helised to turn the eyes 
of the nation from the much-needed reforms within the church to 
the abuses which had sprung up in the borderland 

Pol/it'hCQ.T 

character of where the interests of church and state came into con- 
tact, and deflected the activity of the reformers from 
the moral to the political field, making such men as Wyclif 
the tools of Jolin of Gaunt and the other politicians, who were 
bending all their energies to drive the churchmen out of the 
state offices and secure them for themselves. In 1371 the opposi- 
tion believed themselves strong enough to open a direct attack 
upon the ecclesiastical office-holders, and persuaded parliament to 
petition the crown: "Whereas the government has been carried on 
by men of Holy Church, who are not justifiable in many cases, 
from which great mischief and damages have come in time past 
and more may happen in time to come; therefore, laymen being 
able and sufficient, none other shall be made chancellors, barons 
of the exchequer, or shall be appointed to other great offices 
of state for the future." The petition shows the drift of 
popular opinion at the time and prepares us for the dismissal 
of William of Wykeham and his fellow ecclesiastics the next 
year. 



392 SECOND STAGE OF HUNDRED YEARS' WAR [edward in. 

The new lay officials who took the place of the deposed ecclesi- 
astics had to experience the common lot of a party long out of 
office when suddenly entrusted with a vast and delicate 
the new machinery, the safe management of which depends 

{/(ivoitmcn . ^^^^Q^^ experience quite as much as good will. They had 
charged the ecclesiastical ministers with sluggishness in the con- 
duct of the war. To justify the charge, therefore, they were 
bound to take the war in hand and push it vigorously. But how 
should they secure the money? They hesitated to tax the great 
landholding middle class or to lay hands on the goods of commerce. 
As astute politicians they shrank from incurring the odium of the 
class which controlled the parliaments. They turned, therefore, 
upon the hated churchmen, and proposed to raise the money 
needed by a direct tax of 22s. 3d. on every parish of the kingdom, 
but taken from lands "which since the eighteenth year of Edward 
I. had passed into mortmain." There was this to justify such an 
action: lands held in mortmain were exempt from feudal service 
and hence bore no share of ordinary taxation. Transfers in mort- 
main, also, had been illegal since the passage of the Statute 
of Mortmain in the reign of Edward I. Tactically, however, the 
measure was a serious blunder. By a strange miscalculation, pos- 
sibly due to the lack of experience of the new financiers quite as 
much as to the fault of existing statistics, the ministers overesti- 
mated the number of parishes in England by about five times. 
This compelled the government to increase the tax per parish 
from 22s. to 116s., in order to produce the sum required by the 
budget, and gave only too much ground for the cry of the church 
party, that they were the objects of malicious persecution and 
were being robbed in the name of the state. A singular misfor- 
tune, moreover, attended the efforts of the new councillors to 
prosecute the war. The fleet which was raised with the money 
taken from the clergy was the one which Pembroke lost at Rochelle 
in 1372. Then Edward III. led his ships out of Southampton to 
be driven back again by adverse winds, and the next year John of 
Gaunt led his ill-fated expedition into the heart of France. At 
home in the meantime, while English ships were sunk at sea and 
English soldiers were dying like flies on the fatal march across 



1376] THE GOOD PAKLIAMENT 393 

France, the court was openly parading its shame; Alice Ferrers 
was allowed to traffic in her influence with the king, and her 
favorites traded in the claims of his hapless creditors. 

Mismanagement, extravagance, overwhelming failure, the 

scandals of the court, and the evident helplessness of the king, at 

last brought on the inevitable reaction. In 1376 the 

Tiiereaction, Black Prince came forth from his seclusion, and, making 

1376. The ° 

GondPariia- common cause with William of Wykeham and the earl 
of March, put himself at the head of the opposition. 
In the parliament known as the "Good Parliament," which met in 
April, Peter de la Mare, steward of the earl of March, who had been 
elected speaker, proceeded with great boldness to discuss the misman- 
agement of the government, and demanded an account of recent re- 
ceipts and expenditures before new supplies should be granted. The 
duke of Lancaster bullied and blustered. "What do these base and 
ignoble knights attempt? Do they think they be kings or princes 
of the land? I deem they know not what power I be of. I will 
therefore in the morning appear unto them so glorious, and will 
show such power among them, and with such vigor will terrify 
them, that neither they nor theirs shall dare henceforth to provoke 
me to wrath." But de la Mare was supported by men who were 
not to be dazzled by the prince's glory or frightened by his blus- 
ter. A new council was organized; William of Wykeham was 
restored and the duke of Lancaster was sent into retirement. 
The parliament then began a direct attack upon three mem- 
bers of the council, Latimer, Lyons, and Neville, and also upon 
Alice Perrers. "Their method of attack was almost as im- 
portant as the attack itself, for the Commons proceeded by 
impeaching the accused before the House of Lords. In this 
method of procedure the House of Commons, as a body, appears 
as prosecutors. The lords act as judges; hear the evidence 
brought by the managers before the Commons, their speeches upon 
it, and the answer of the accused, and finally pronounce by a 
majority the verdict and sentence." Lyons had the impudence to 
attempt to save himself by sending to the Black Prince a bribe 
of £],000, done up in a cask "as if it had been a barrel of 
sturgeon." Latimer and Lyons were found guilty of robbing the 



394 SECOND STAGE OF HUNDRED YEARS' WAR [edward m. 

king under the guise of lending him money; Neville of trading in 
the king's debts; but strange to say, the most serious charge they 
could make good against Alice Ferrers was a violation of an ordi- 
nance which forbade a woman to practice in a court of law. 

Before the sitting of the Good Parliament was concluded the 
Black Prince died. His death at once brought forward the ques- 
tion of the succession. The parliament greatly feared 
Black Prince, the ambition of John of Gaunt, and, believing him capa- 
ble of any crime, the Commons entreated the king to 
bring them the little "Richard of Bordeaux," the son of the Black 
Prince, that he might be formally honored as the heir to the crown. 
They also persuaded the king to strengthen his council by the 
addition of ten more members representing the popular party. 

In July the Good Parliament broke up with the feeling that 
all had been done well; but the members had hardly reached their 
Return of bomes before John of Gaunt resumed his old place, 
Gmmfto Alice Perrers was brought back, the late speaker was 
power. arrested and put in prison, and a long list of charges 

brought against William of Wykeham. The new members of the 
council, also, were denied a seat, and of a list of one hundred and 
forty petitions, embodying the grievances for which the Good 
Parliament had humbly sought redress, not one received the assent 
of the crown. In January 1377 a new parliament was summoned, 
packed to suit the ideas of John of Gaunt, and the work of the 
Good Parliament was speedily undone. The new parliament also 
wrestled with the question of supplies, and signalized itself by vot- 
ing a poll tax of 4d. on all persons, male or female, over fourteen 
years of age, a kind of tax "hitherto unheard of." 

While the party of John of Gaunt were thus carrying things 
with a high hand in the council and in the parliament, convocation 
was preparing to take up the cudgels in defense 
frwcjf "isw ^^ *^^ church. The unjust attack upon Wykeham, 
had roused the churchmen to strike back. They could 
not reach John of Gaunt directly, but they could strike him by 
attacking his ally and supporter John AVyclif. This remarkable 
man had first appeared in Oxford as a student. He had soon made 
himself master of the existing scholastic system and won a reputa- 



1361-1376] JOHN WYCLIF 395 

tiori among the distinguished scholars of the university. He was 
also a controversialist of rare povi^ers. He was by temperament 
witty and ever inclined to give a hnmorous turn to an argument; 
his mind was acute and well sharpened by long training in the 
methods of the scholastic philosophy. His personal character, 
also, was beyond reproach, and his genial, sunny nature had 
won him many friends. In 13G1 he had become master of Balliol. 
He had also taken a prominent part in a conflict which had been 
stirred up against the influence of the mendicant orders at the uni- 
versity. In 1366 he had boldly assailed the pope's claim of feudal 
supremacy over England, publicly defending the action of parlia- 
ment in refusing to continue the annual tribute. Two years later 

he had more formally set forth his views in his "Theory 
Diviiul^ises °^ Dominion," the famous De Dominio Divino, in which 

he asserted that all right of dominion must depend 
upon true relations with God, the supreme suzerain of the uni- 
verse; that kings are vicars of God as truly as popes, and that the 
state is as sacred as the church. Such views had naturally 
attracted a man like John of Gaunt, who was not over-shrewd even 
for a politician, who, while failing to comprehend the remote logical 
application of Wyclif's theories in establishing the responsibility 
of the individual and the liberty of the individual conscience, 
thought only of the support which the views of Wyclif would give 
to a party built up ostensibly upon the principle of opposition to 
the usurpations of churchmen in the state. Wyclif on his part 
had accepted the alliance, apparently, without question. Did he 
know the real character of the man whom he thus supported? 
The vicious and unscrupulous baron, who ostentatiously paraded his 
principles in order to cloak his motives, and the high-minded and 
single-hearted doctor to whom double dealing was au impossibility, 
were surely a strange team to be yoked together. Yet, happily or 
unhappily, they found themselves in accord upon the one point, 
that it was high time that the fine feathers of the church should 
be plucked and that the clergy should be reduced to their simple 
spiritual functions. John of Gaunt, therefore, had found in Wyclif 
a useful ally, and had taken him to Bruges in 1374 in order to 
negotiate the truce with France and also to bring the pope to agree 



396 SECOND STAGE OF HUNDRED YEARS' WAR [edwahd ill. 

to some adjustment of the matter of provisors, as well as to argue 
in general the relation of England and the papacy. 

It was natural, therefore, that Wyclif should share in the 
opprobrium which had fallen upon John of Gaunt's government, 

and that the clerical party should single him out for 
The trial of attack as a counter to the attack upon Wykeham. He 

was accordingly summoned to appear before a commit- 
tee of bishops at St. Paul's in London. John of Gaunt assumed 
the duty of protecting him and seeing fair play. The people, who 
were deeply interested in the trial because of its political bearing, 
also came in great numbers and packed the hall. Wyclif was the 
last to enter, and when the judges left him standing, Henry 
Percy, the friend of Lancaster, who had come with him to the 
trial, ordered a seat to be given to the jarisoner. The judges 
refused and a bitter altercation followed in which the |)eople finally 
took part; the whole affair ended in a riot. The duke of Lan- 
caster fled to Kensington where he was protected by the widow of 
the Black Prince, who was very popidar with the Londoners. 
Although the duke had come out of the affair without much dig- 
nity, he had perhaps accomplished his purpose. The trial had 
been broken up, and Wycliff had been saved, at least from a 
formal condemnation by the ministers of the church. 

The attempted trial of Wyclif was held in February. On June 
21 Edward III. breathed his last, and with his death the schemes 

of John of Gaunt for the time came to an end. So 
^f:'^!fjtf'^' ended in its fifty-first year the long reign of Edward the 
Jane 21. 1377. Little. Its features of greatest importance, if not of 

Important ° _ -■■ ' 

features i>f greatest interest to the ordinary reader, are not his 
his reign. » _ _ ... 

dramatic campaigning and his brilliant victories; but 

fii^^f, the increasing authority of parliament; second, the beginnings 
of social and religions revolution; and third, a genuine revival of 
national feeling, which found expression in a new English liter- 
ature and gave new importance and dignity to the English lan- 
guage. 

First, the reign of Edward III. is marked by a steady increase 
in tlie authority of parliament as a factor in the government. The 
Statute of York, 1322, had definitely established the right of 



1322-1377] INCREASING AUTHORITY OF PARLIAMENT 397 

the Commons to a share in the deliberations of parliament. 
During the early part of Edward III.'s reign the l^nights of 

the shire began regularly to sit with the representatives 
dignitiiofthe of the towns ^ and thus greatly enhanced the dignity 

and importance of the inferior house, enabling it to 
claim a voice in the government of the nation and to defend the 
liberties of the people in a way which was not possible as long as 
it was composed of simple deputies whose sole function was to 
consent to taxation or to advise upon matters of trade. ^ 

The advance in the dignity and usefulness of the Commons was 
only a phase of a general increase in the activity and authority of 

parliament as a whole, largely a result of the Hundred 

Increase in Years' War. Frequent sessions were necessary; dur- 

actwitij and i ■' ' 

""wSm&H'f ^'^S 1^'^§' periods the parliaments were virtually annual.^ 
The well-known shiftiness of the king, his frequent 
attempts to secure money contrary to the spirit of the laws as con- 
firmed by Edward I., required the utmost watchfulness and devel- 
oped a clearness of vision and boldness, as well, worthy of the days 
of Pym and Hampden. As a result of this faithful persistence in 
holding the king to the paths prescribed by the laws, three very 
important constitutional principles, all bearing directly upon the 
authority of parliament, and all more or less clearly expressed in 
formal law, passed into definite practice: 1. No legislation could be 
binding upon the nation without the concurrence of both houses. 
2. The king might not raise money by taxes, loans, or otherwise, 
witliout the consent of j^arliament; any such attempt on the 
king's part was henceforth illegal, and it was within the right of 
the subject to resist the king's ofliicers who sought thus to take his 
property. John Hampden could not go farther. 3. The king's 
ministers were directly responsible to parliament and might be 
impeached.* 

1 This change must have taken place before 1347. See Taswell-Lang- 
mead, p. 220. 

2 Taswell-Langmead, pp. 220, 221. 

3 There are 48 recorded sessions during the 50 years of Edward III. 's 
reign. 

* For summary of the steps by which these principles passed into prac- 
tice, see Taswell-Langmead, pp. 226-334. 



398 SECOND STAGE OF HUKDRED YEAKS' WAR [edward III. 

Second, the reign of Edward III. witnessed the beginnings of 

great social and religions movements which were to result on the 

one hand in the abolition of villain;ige in England and 

religious on the other in the complete severance of England from 
movement of , -,-r , i -i ^ 2^ 

Edwardiii.'s the great European system represented by the papacy. 

Edward and his ministers had little to do with the first 
of these movements, save to accelerate it by their foolish Statute 
of Labourers. New conditions made villainage no longer a paying 
institution and the landlord was forced to accept other relations to 
the laboring class. With the second of these movements Edward 
had much to do. The contiguity of the papal court to France, 
the undoubted French influence at Avignon, involved the popes 
even against their will in the hostility which a generation of war 
had bred in the breasts of Englishmen against the French nation, 
teaching them to look upon the papacy as a foreign institution. 
The continued demands of the papacy, its interference in the 
ecclesiastical affairs of England, also, opened the eyes of English- 
men to the real significance of the appellate jurisdiction of the 
pope's court and the claim of the pope to appoint to English liv- 
ings. The Statute of Provisors and the Statute of Prfemunire 
are the first paragraphs of the English Declaration of Independ-. 
ence. It was impossible, furthermore, for such a movement to stop 
simply vs^ith an attack upon the political authority of the pope. 
The abuses which had crept into the church were too widespread 
and flagrant, the sufl'erings of the people were too acute. Men 
were not lacking who dared to proceed from institutions to 
doctrines, and question the fou illations of the entire ecclesiastical 
system. This religious revival, however, associated with the name 
of Wyclif, really belongs to the next generation and must not be 
confused with the estrangement. of the English government and the 
papacy, which began with Edward III. 

Third, the reign of Ed^ward III. is marked by a pronounced 
growth of the national spirit. The traits of nationality had begun 
to develop even before the Norman Conquest and had continued 
in a steady and sturdy growth. Yet some elements were still 
lacking. The Englishman had a language of his own and the 
beginnings of a literature, but he had not learned either to respect 



1363-1393] LANGLAND AND PIEES PLOWMAIST 399 

the one or to love the other. The Latin had never yielded its place 
as the language of the church and the university. The pliant and 
nimble French had displaced the more uncouth English in the 
court and in the schools. William the Conqueror had triecf to 
learn English but with poor success. Other kings had not made 
the effort at all. Even Edward III. spoke English with difficulty. 
Ralph Higden, a writer of the times, deplores the custom of com- 
pelling English boys, against the practice of all other nations, to 
construe their lessons in French; a practice, which he declares, 
had been followed since the Norman Conquest. The French had 
also invaded the law courts and the parliaments. It had taken pos- 
session of the shops and was fast becoming the language of trade 
and commerce. Since the beginning of the war, however, the 
hpstility of the English toward the French people had extended to 
their language and the use of the foreign tongue had rapidly fallen 
off. In 1362 the people had become so unaccustomed to the 
French that the law courts were ordered by statute to conduct 
their proceedings in English.^ In 1363 for the first time the 
chancellor opened parliament with a speech in English. 

The vigor with which the English were turning to their own 

tongue again is also shown in the great literary creations of the 

next reign which are associated with the names of 

masterpieces Wyclif, Langland, and Chaucer. "Wyclif discarded the 

of the era. ti-oi • • , ^ it 

ponderous Latin of the university and spoke directly to 
the people in the homely speech of the plowboy and the village 
smith: "Let clerks enditen in Latin, and let Frenchmen 
in their French also enditen their quaint terms, for it is 
kindly to their mouths, but let us show our fantaseys in such 
words as were learnden of our dames tongue." Innumerable 
tracts, but most of all his English Bible, masterpieces all of the 
simple chaste English of the jDeople in their best moments, show 
how well Wyclif kept to his purpose. 

Of William Langland little is known save his poem, "The 
Vision of Piers Plowman." The poem is a running satire of the 
time, presented in the form of a vision or dream, in which in 
a plain "full of folk," the dreamer watches the mad struggle for 

' The records were still kept in Latin. 



400 SECOND STAGE OP HUNDRED YEARS' WAR [edward ill. 

place and pelf, so unseemly in men of high calling. He deplores 
the evil practices of the church; he beholds Lady Mead, — re- 
ward or bribery, — obtaining bishoprics for fools: he 

William o i ' 

Lanyiand. draws droll pictures of the huntinff priest, lazy, iovial. 
The Vision 0/ , , , . , .^ , , , . . . 

Piers hard drinkma:, who comes to church lust m time to 

Plowman. ^ . ^ '^ . ,^11 t 

hear the Ifa missa est; but nnds only severe words 

for the professional pardoners and the herd of knaves who traffic in 

holy things. Yet he has no thought of doing away with the church, 

the hierarchy, or its doctrines, and only prays for its amendment 

from the pope down. 

The same wholesome sense, a desire for reform rather than 
revolution, is revealed in Langland's view of the political society of 
his day. His sympathies are with the people, yet there is place 
and need for all the great ones in the well-ordered England. TJie 
king is necessary as the head of the state to rule the commons and 
"holy kirke and clergy fro cursede men to defende." King and 
parliament are the law-makers; the knights defend the priest and 
the laborer; the merchant's wealth must restore the broken bridges 
and support the scholars. Even lovely ladies with their "longe 
fyngres" have their tasks with the needle. But supporting all, 
feeding all, is the humble plowman, Piers, bending to his daily 
toil, patient as his oxen. The teaching of the poem is wholesome 
and sound. The welfare of the state depends upon the harmony 
and mutual support of all classes. The great have their tempta- 
tions which they may avoid by marrying Lady Mead to Sir 
Knight Conscience. Piers Plowman is not to be despised. 
He is the main support of the state. In his humble, unadorned, 
but honest life, free from the elements that lead other men astray, 
Truth finds a congenial home. 

Unlike Langland, Chaucer is the poet of the court. The art 

and elegance of the French love poets are his, in marked contrast 

with the unadorned alliterations of Langland. His 

Chaucer. . , • « 1 t-. • t t n • 

spirit, moreover, is or the Kenaissance, nor does he hesi- 
tate to draw his themes from Petrarch or Boccaccio. His sym- 
pathy is with the upper classes. He is neither religious reformer, 
nor social reformer. He bears no burdens. He loves life for its 
own sake, and sees in the foibles of those about him, themes 



CHAUCER 401 

whereon to make merry rather than to mourn. His days were 
passed in the midst of business and pleasure. He was courtier, 
traveler, office holder, and pensioner; nor was he wanting in that 
variety of fortune which so often falls to one who is dependent 
upon the smile of the great for daily bread. His pictures of life 
and manners, particularly of the clergy, are not therefore always 
to be taken in full confidence. Like Wyclif, he was a partisan of 
John of Gaunt, and reflects the views which prevailed among the 
men of that following. He had, however, none of the reformer's 
sincerity of purpose. Nor can we avoid suspecting the honesty 
of a man who conld thus lament the downfall of Pedro the 
Cruel, the passing favorite of the English court : 

" O noble, O worthy Pedro, glory of Spain, 
Whom fortune held so high in majesty." 

His best known book is the "Canterbury Tales," written prob-- 
ably in the later years of his life and left incomplete. He brings 

together at the Tabard Inn in London, a company of 
burirraUs' '^^^ ^'^'^ womeu from various classes of society, all bound 

on a pilgrimage to the shrine of the popular Thomas a 
Becket of Canterbury. Here, then, in the stories and conversa- 
tions of the pilgrims, as they lope along in the easy, rocking can- 
ter, the favorite Canterbury gallop, is the England of the 
fourteenth century in miniature; its dress, its foibles, its heart 
songs and its laughter, its meanness and its weakness. Here is 
the "very perfect gentle knight," just returned from his battles 
and adventures in the wars, accompanied by his squire; the sturdy 
yeoman, he who gave such good account of himself at Crecy and 
Poitiers, who with professional pride keeps his good bow like an 
experienced archer. There is also the hunting monk, who cares 
not a groat for the rules of his order ; the me'ndicant friar, a sturdy 
beggar, "wanton and merry;" the summoner whose fiery face is a 
terror to the children ; the pardoner with his wallet "brimful of 
pardons come from Eome all hot," who can rake in more money 
from a country parish than the parson can get in two months, an 
arrant knave who knows more than one trick of wheedling the 
coppers out of the purses of simple country folk. Then, too, there 



402 



SECOND STAGE OF HUNDRED YEARS' WAR [edward in. 



is the brighter side of church life; the gentle, dainty prioress is 
there with her courtly French lisp, her refined manners and tender 
heart; the earnest parson, poor, loving, and self-sacrificing, the 
salt of the church to keep it all from rotting. Of the learned 
classes, the physician, the lawyer, and the Oxford student are also 
there; other characters also, such as the merchant, the miller, the 
cook, the reeve, and finally the plowman, suggesting the inspira- 
tion of Langland, as the parson suggests Wyclif. These characters 
are not allegories or mythical creatures of the past, but the real 
men and women of the England of the fourteenth century, who 
bore its burdens and felt its sorrows; the men who fought out the 
Hundred Years' War, who caught the glow of the morning and 
made merry in the conscious sense of the new life which was 
at hand; a life which they could feel, but could not comprehend. 

CONTEMPORARIES OF EDWARD III. 



KINGS OF FRANCE 

Philip IV., d. 1314 
Louis X., d. 1316 
Philip v., cl. 1332 
Chas. IV., d. 1328 
Plulip VI.. d. 1350 
John, d. 1364 
Charles V. 



EMPERORS 

Henry VII., (X. 1313 
Louis IV.,(?. 1347 
Charles IV. 



KINGS OF CASTILE 

Ferdinand IV., d. 1312 
Ali)lionso XI., d. 1350 
Pedro, d. 1368 
Henry II. 



KINGS OF SCOT- 
LAND 

Robert I., d. 1329 
David II., d. 1370 
Robert IL 



FAMOUS MEN NOT SOVEREIGNS 



Era of Babylonian Captivity, 

1309-1376 
Began with Clement V., 1305- 

1314, and ended with Grea;- 

ory XI., 1370-1378, no great 

popes. 



ARCHBISHOPS OF 
CANTERBURY 

The only great name of the 
era is tliat of Thomas 
Bradwardin, the tlieolo- 
gian and mathematician, 
who died of tlie plague 
forty days after his con- 
secration, 1349. 



James van Arteveldt, 1285- 

134.5. 
Thomas Bradwardin, 1290- 

1349. 
Cola di Rienzi, 1313-1354 
Stephen Marcel, d. 13.58 
Francesco Petrarch, 1304- 

1374 
Giovanni Boccaccio, 1313- 

1375 



p]dward Prince of Wales. 

"the Black Prince," 

1330-1376 
Bertrand du Guesclin, 

1320?-1380 
Jolm Wyclif, 1324-1384 
William Langland, 1330?- 

1400? 
Geoffrey Chaucer, 1340?-1400 
Jean Froissart, 1337-1410 



CHAPTER V 

THE PEASANT REVOLT. THE ATTACK OF THE KING 
UPOISr THE CONSTITUTION 

RICHABD U. 1377-W9 

Upon the death of Edward, John of Gaunt made no attempt to 

continue his control of the government. Possibly he thought that 

as the eldest living uncle of the child king his influence 
Openinff of i . i i i 

reign of Rich- was assured ; for although the barons manifested no dis- 
arm ii. Rec- . . . , . . , 
onciiiatimi position to appoint him either regent or protector, and 

of parties. o i ' 

at once vested Richard with the full rights of a sover- 
eign, 5^et as long as the period of the minority continued, the 
powerful duke must naturally remain the first among the little 
king's political tutors. The enemies of John of Gaunt on their 
part were apparently as reluctant as he to push the quarrel farther, 
and in the presence of the distractions which confronted the state 
were ready to abandon partisan strife in the interests of the new 
reign. The accession of Richard, therefore, was the signal for a 
general reconciliation of all parties. Peter de la Mare was released 
from prison. The charges against William of Wykeham were 
dropped, and the prelate and the duke were formally reconciled. 

When the new parliament met in October, although the mood 
of the members on the whole was likewise conciliatory, they had 

no thought of dropping the work which the Good Par- 
owjdMiriia- I'^'^ient had begun. They were still suspicious of John 
unued^^^' ^^ Gauut and would allow neither him nor his brothers 

a place in the royal council; yet they did not object to 
his friend, Richard Fitz-Alan Earl of Arundel. The Commons 
again made de la Mare their speaker as a matter of course. 
They also demanded that annual parliaments be required by law; 
that statutes once sanctioned by the crown be enrolled without 

403 



404 THE PEASANT EEVOLT [richard ii. 

change or amendment by the council ; that the evil counsellors of 
Edward be removed; that the lords name the chancellor, treasurer, 
and barons of the exchequer, and that during the king's minority 
these ministers be not removed without the advice of the lords. 
They also voted a subsidy for the war, but demanded that the 
control of the funds be put in the hands of two treasurers who 
should be responsible to parliament. The men chosen were Wil- 
liam Walworth and John Philipot, prominent citizens of London. 
It was high time that the advisers of the young king awoke to 
the serious nature of the troubles which threatened the state. 
The sky was portentous with coming storm. The war 
oftrouhUn with France had not only long since ceased to be profit- 

whlch eon- t -, . r,- -, i ^ 

fronted neio able but had inflicted upon the people a constantly 
increasing burden of taxation. The great peasant class, 
who numbered one half the population of England, upon whom, as 
Langland had tried to show, the whole superstructure of state and 
society rested, no longer bore their load with the old-time ox-like 
patience. It is not likely that their terrible strength was more 
than dimly understood either by themselves or their masters, or 
that an actual rising was apprehended. Yet there was certainly 
reason for disquiet in the minds of tliose v/ho were directing the 
government. The endless taxes were collected with ever-increas- 
ing diflficulty and the i-eturns were as unsatisfactory.^ The pro- 
prietary classes, instead of rallying to the support of the state, with 
customary shortsightedness were inclined to uidoad their own 
burdens upon the people. The tide of war, also, which had so long 
desolated France was now at last approaching England. The very 
week after Edward's death the French burned Rye; and in the 
summer following they continued their depredations, striking 
various exposed points on the southern coast. The Scots also 
were restless and active, and the condition of the borders added 
not a little to the anxiety of the ministry. 

The French war was directly responsible for the beginning of 

' The failure of the several levies of this period to realize the amounts 
ex2:)ected, was probably due to the success of a disloyal people in cheating 
the collectors quite as much as to the blunders of the ministers in making 
their estimates. 



1379, 1380] THE POLL TAX 405 

the troubles of Eichard's reign, as it was for most of the trouble 

of this era. John of Gaunt had persuaded the council to entrust 

him with the money, which had been recently granted by parlia- 

„ . . ment, in order that he might fit out a fleet and clear 

Beginning ' => 

%nePm" ^^® Channel. The attempt was a failure as might be 
'isif 1380 expected of any thing committed to the care of John of 

Gaunt. He then crossed to Brittany and attacked St. 
Malo, but, baffled by the obstinate courage of the burghers, was again 
forced to return without results. The ministry had now spent their 
money, and they hesitated to ask parliament for another subsidy. 
In their strait they turned to the new plan of taxing people by the 
head; a scheme which commended itself to the proprietary classes 
because it promised to relieve them somewhat by compelling the 
landless poor and the clergy to bear a part of the burden of taxa- 
tion. The measure had been resorted to by John of Gaunt's parlia- 
ment of 1377, but the levy of a groat a head had failed to return 
a sum adequate to the needs of the state. It was determined, 
tlierefore, to increase the net sum, at the same time relieving the 
measure of the charge of injustice by grading the tax according 
to rank. A duke was to pay £6 13s. 4d. ; an earl £4; and so 
down to the villain who paid his groat as before. The clergy also 
paid by a similar scale. The amount, however, owing to a very 
simple blunder of the financiers, fell short of the estimate by about 
one-half, and in 1380 parliament levied a third poll tax, but with 
no such just graduation as in the previous year. The humblest 
villain had now to pay a shilling for each member of his family of 
fifteen years of age and upward, while the richest man in the king- 
dom paid only a pound. 

The tax was a fatal blunder. Inflammatory elements were scat- 
tered everywhere; the strife of landlord and villain was increasing 

in bitterness daily; the free laborer and the wandering 
inflammatory artlsau, under the Statute of Labourers, were treated as 

vagrants; disbanded soldiers from the wars, broken in 
fortune and swelling with pride and mischief, wandered every- 
where; begging friars, the newsmongers and gossips of the times, 
brought the news of the day to the humblest and added their own 
fiery editorials; incendiary priests, like John Ball of Kent, 



406 THE PEASAXT REVOLT [ 



Richard II. 



preached the rights of man to eager multitudes, and even dared to 
question the whole existing social order. 

When, therefore, the third poll tax was announced, it needed 
only the irritation caused by the attempt of the officials to enforce 
Tiierisinq Collection to cause the seething waters to overflow. 
wasanu "^^^ ^^'^^ outbreak occurred near Tilbury in Essex 
1381. about the last week in May. A few days later trouble 

began in Kent. By June 10, the counties of the lower Thames 
were up from end to end; manors were burned, manor rolls 
destroyed, and bailiffs, lawyers, and particularly obnoxious land- 
lords, hunted down and murdered in cold blood. Everywhere the 
same scenes of violence- were enacted, though with ever changing 
variety in the grim details. Then, when the special objects which 
had roused the wrath of the people in their home districts had been 
destroyed, the mobs, maddened by their very successes and still 
unsated, from all the "home counties" began marching upon 
London. The insurrection in the meanwhile continued to spread. 
By the 19th of June it had reached Somerset and on the 23d it 
had reached Yorkshire. There were echoes even in distant Devon 
and Cornwall and in remote Chester, though the extent of the out- 
breaks here is not known. 

The government was helpless to protect its subjects or even to 

defend itself. At the first break of the storm an expedition lay at 

Plymouth ready for the French wars, but, not realizing 

o/fl'e'^'^*"'^'''* the importance of the crisis, the leaders had put out to 

yocenimcnt. ^^^^ rjij^g ^^^^^ other force of any importance in the 

kingdom was with Percy on the Scottish border. The nobles and 
their retainers were scattered over the kingdom and owing to the 
rapid spread of the insurrection it was impossible for them to 
gather in any force sufficient to disperse or overawe the gathering 
mobs. Without any trained police force at command, without 
any standing army, the government could only look on and await 
developments. 

On the 12th of June an army of Kentish insurgents lay 
encamped on Black Heath, within five miles of the Southwark end 
of London Bridge. All day long their ranks were swelled by other 
arrivals from the towns and villages of Surrey and even from the 



138l] LONDOif IN THE HANDS OF THE MOB 407 

distant wolds of Sussex. William Walworth, now mayor of London, 
had no sympathy with the risings and had fully determined to keep 

the insurgents out of the city, but he was overborne 
Icr^umdon!'' l>y the advice of some of his aldermen who were 
June 12. supported by the city populace, and on the 13th the 
great drawbridge which cut off London from the Southwark side 
was lowered and the peasants from the southern counties were 
allowed to stream across the bridge into the city. The same even- 
ing another horde which had been advancing from Essex encamped 
at Mile End, while the northern heights were occupied by still 
other insurgents who had come down from Hertford and St. 
Albans. Here also the city authorities, more than half in sym- 
pathy with the rebels, failed to keep the gates closed, and in a short 
time these new streams were allowed to swell the tide of riot and 
lawlessness that was already roaring through the streets of the city. 
A wild afternoon and night followed. John of Gaunt, fortu- 
nately for himself, had been called north by threat of new trouble 

with Scotland, but his beautiful palace, the Savoy, was at 
fhemohin ^aud and upon this the people first vented their wrath. 
junTn '^^^ Temple, the Inns of Court, and other buildings 

associated in the popular mind with* the hateful laws 
which they hoped to overturn, were fired and all legal records 
destroyed that could be found. The jails, also, were opened and 
their populations turned loose to join in inaugurating the reign 
of terror. From arson and plunder the rioters soon passed to 
murder; seizing their victims in church and sanctuary, and drag- 
ging them forth to be dispatched in the presence of the applauding 
multitude. 

The council with the king had very early sought refuge behind 
the strong walls of the Tower, and their asylum soon became the 

focus towards which all the many streams of rioters 
idUe%nd, began to converge as if by common consent, clamoring 
urn 14. ^^^ |.j^g death of the ministers who were hiding within. 
Through a sleepless night the king and his ministers "sat with 
awful eye," while ever and again "the most horrible of all sounds, 
the roar of a mob howling for blood, penetrated the grim Avails." 
The council in despair offered to parley with the insurgents, and 



408 THE PEASANT REVOLT [richabd il. 

it was finally agreed that if tliey would retire to Mile End the 
king would meet them and hear their grievances. The king was 
as good as his word, and on the morning of the 14th rode out to 
the rendezvous accompanied by a group of nobles, heard the 
demand of the peasants for freedom and graciously granted that 
they should never again "be named or held for serfs." A general 
pardon was also promised, and a small army of clerks were soon at 
work drawing up the necessary charters. 

Within the city affairs were not going as well. Apparently 
only a part of the rebels had kept the tryst with the king, and 

those who staid behind, in some unaccountable way,^ 
ofther'efa- prevailed upon the guards to admit them to the Tower. 
Tower, Jane A frififlitful massacre followed of those who had not 

dared to accompany the king to Mile End. Leg, the 
man who had farmed the poll tax, paid for his unlucky speculation 
with his life. A friar who was unfortunately recognized as a 
friend of John of Gaunt was torn limb from limb. But the 
noblest victims were Archbishop Sudbury, the chancellor, and Sir 
Eobert Hales, the treasurer, who were dragged out to Tower Hill 
and there beheaded to the delight of the jeering crowds. 

By this time many of the rebels had departed for their homes, 
hastening along the country roads with their precious but valueless 

charters in their hands. But some of the leaders 
SmithMd,' apparently were not satisfied and remained behind with 

many of their people in hope of securing some more 
definite guarantee of protection than that offered by the simple 
charters. Among these was the famous Walter Tyler" who now 



' It is not credible that the king, as a part of his agreement with 
those whom he met at Mile End, himself gave the order to deliver the 
refugees in the Tower to the mob. See Trevelyan, England in the Age of 
Wyclif, pp. 235, 236. 

2 Familiarly called Wat Tyler. Little is really known of this man 
whose name it has been the fashion to give to the rising. Most of the 
stories associated with his name are unknown to contemporary writers, 
especially the tradition which begins the revolt with the murder of the 
royal collector, who had insu.lted Tyler's daughter. "The story . . . 
must go the way of William Tell's shot." Trevelyan, Age of Wyclif, 
p. 210. 



138l] WALTER TYLER 409 

for a moment becomes a conspicuous figure in the revolt. The 
mobs in the meanwhile through the night of the 14th continued 
their burning and slaughtering, guided no longer by any motive save 
the lust for plunder and wild delight in rioting. The council saw 
that another effort must be made to rid the city of the lawless 
multitude and arranged for a second parley by which the king was 
to meet the rebels at Smithfield on Saturday the 15th, Here, how- 
ever, the business did not move as smoothly as at Mile End, pos- 
sibly because the demands of Tyler, who acted as spokesman for 
his fellows, were more to the point and could not so easily be put 
off. Hot words passed. Mayor Walworth drew his sword and cut 
down the peasant leader. A moment of uncertainty followed. 
Cries for vengeance arose and arrows were set to bow-strings, when 
Richard boldly spurred his horse into the thick of the press, sliout- 
ing, "What need you my masters? Would you shoot your king? 
I will be your captain." The multitude closed around the hand- 
some boy whom they had not yet learned to distrust, and in tri- 
umph bore him off with them to Clerkenwell Fields. The mayor 
and his party in the meanwhile dashed back to the city to gather 
the loyal citizens in order to rescue the king, for whose safety tliey 
had Just cause of alarm. What happened during these few hours 
when the little king sat among his humble subjects, what promises 
were made, will never be known. Certain it is that the 2:»eople 
regarded him with touching reverence, nor is it likely that he 
received other than the kindest and most respectful treatment. 
They, on their part, apparently were well satisfied with their closer 
acquaintance with royalty, and, when at last the armed bands 
approached from the city, they made no attempt at resistance but 
gave up their hostage and were peaceably dismissed to their homes. 
With the collapse of the revolt in London, the excitement in 
other places also rapidly subsided. Then followed the reaction, as 
strong and bitter as the rising. Terrible was the 

TJic vsctct'ioTi 

vengeance which the masters took upon their former 
serfs for all the terrors which the few days of rioting and blood- 
shed had inspired. The boy king's counsellors easily persuaded 
him that he had no right to grant the charters of emancipation, 
and he forthwith revoked them. Those who still kept the field 



410 THE PEASANT REVOLT [richard ii. 

were ruthlessly ridden down by the king's men-at-arms, or the 
retainers who followed their lords. Then the agents of the law 
went to work, and those who had in any way borne a conspicuous 
part in the recent rising, were hunted out by the hundreds and 
punished with that pitiless brutality which has always marked the 
dealings of the master with the serf, when the serf has dared to 
turn. Parliament also lent its aid to the work of repression and 
passed still more severe and unjust laws against the villain. 

Such measures, however, were futile. Villainage was no longer 
a paying institution. The enlightened conscience of the nation, 
moreover, had begun to rest uneasy under a sense of 
Decline of wrouff done, of uniust burdens imposed. The land- 
lords had for once gazed into the abyss; they had 
learned the latent strength of the landless; they did not care to 
provoke a second rising. Old forms of servitude were gradually 
allowed to lapse. The severer laws became a dead letter. Eman- 
cipation went on again in the natural order; service was constantly 
commuted for money payments. The smaller freeholders steadily 
increased; wages kept rising, and with the rising wages the com- 
forts of the laboring class also increased. At the outbreak of the 
Eeformation villainage continued to exist in England, if at all, 
only in the more remote corners which had not yet felt the touch 
of the new life of the nation. 

Thus began and ended the famous Peasant Eevolt which for a 
moment threatened to sweep away not only king, lords, and com- 
mons, but the entire social system of the fourteenth 
Cmwieofthc ceuturv. lu sfcneral the poll tax seems to have been 

rising. j o i ^ 

the immediate occasion of the rising; but back of the 
poll tax was the Statute of Labourers, and back of that was a long 
story of unrequited wrongs, differing in detail in each locality, but 
common to all in the hatred which it breathed for the great proprie- 
tors, whether priest or noble. Beyond the sj)ecial grievances which 
the people cherished against their landlords, there seems also to have 
taken shape in the popular mind some sort of confused belief that 
the counsellors of the king and particularly John of Gaunt were 
responsible for the mismanagement of the government, the Statute 
of Labourers, the poll tax, and all the troubles which had ensued. 



1381] ISTATURE OF THE RISING 411 

Their first cry for vengeance, therefore, soon passed to a very 
definite programme of political and social reform. The poll tax 
was to be suppressed ; the Statute of Labourers repealed ; the boy 
king, to whom the people were touchingly loyal throughout, must 
be rescued from the hands of his evil counsellors and better 
government secured; and finally villainage was to be abolished by 
the granting of complete economic and personal freedom. 

The rising took hold of the lower classes, but was by no means 
confined to the serfs. In Kent there were no villains and yet the 
Kentish rising was the most serious and destructive of 
tt^^ristn^ any. The populace of the cities were deeply interested 
and at the first many of the city officials, as in London, 
were in more or less sympathy with the insurgents. In East Anglia, 
for reasons unknown, even gentlemen were to be found in their 
ranks. The animus of the rising, moreover, was not directed against 
the nobility or even against the proprietors as a class. In marked 
contrast with the horrible atrocities committed by the Jacquerie in 
France, the women and children of the nobles were not molested. 
Even the men who sufl:ered were mostly those who had won an 
unenviable reputation for cruelty in a local way or had come to 
represent to the people the system which they hated. The bailiffs, 
the stewards, the lawyers, and the ministers of the crown were the 
objects of vengeance quite as much as the nobles and the abbots. 
The manor houses, barns, and granaries, and particularly the manor 
rolls, which were associated in the minds of the people directly 
with all that they had suffered, were also marked for destruction. 
It was inevitable that the reaction which followed the Peasant 
Eevolt should affect seriously the religious reform which is asso- 
ciated with the name of Wyclif. Soon after the death 

Progress of 

Wyclif s ' of Edward, a papal bull had been received in England, 
directing the trial of Wyclif for "holding opinions sub- 
versive of chnrch and state." But John of Gaunt's influence 
was still strong enough to protect his old ally, and the proceedings 
had been stopped by the direct interference of the government. 
Wyclif, however, had thought it best to retire to Lutterworth 
where the crown had presented him with a living. Here he had 
devoted himself to the work of disseminating his religious views, 



412 THE PEASANT REVOLT [richard il. 

beginuiug the famous series of tracts in the simple homely- 
English of the people. It was in connection with this work 
also that he began that other greater work, his translation 
of the Scriptures, " the first specimen of literary English 
prose written since the cessation of the Anglo-Saxon Chron- 
icle." Wyclif's views of Christian doctrine, also, advanced rapidly. 
He was no longer content to attack simply the abuses of 
the church, but began to assail its fundamental doctrines. He 
not only accepted the Bible as the sole authority in the church, 
but also declared the right of the individual to interpret it for 
himself, even against the authority of the fathers or the councils. 
He denied, also, the miracle of the mass, seeing in the Lord's sup- 
per merely a memorial service, the only merit of which lay in the 
spiritual frame engendered by its sacred associations. In this he 
even went beyond Lnther even anticipating some of the advanced 
views of the later reformers. 

The promulgation of these views of Wyclif was contem 
porary with the insurrection of the peasants, and men in 
their excitement failed to distinguish between the mis- 
^^tR'Sat"'^' sionaries of Wyclif and such fiery agitators as John 
lartti^lT''' ^^^^- "^^oy accused them of sympathizing with the 
UachEvs peasants, and made the teachings of Wyclif respon- 
sible for the excesses of the insurrection. Thus the 
proprietary classes, who had heretofore favored Wyclif, began to 
confound the cry for church reform with the cry for social and 
political reform. Even John of Gaunt stigmatized Wyclif's fol- 
lowers as "heretics against the sacrament of the altar," and bade 
Wyclif be silent. The enemies of Wyclif, taking advantage of the 
reaction, in a synod held in 1382, known as the "Council of the 
Earthquake," succeeded in branding as heretical twenty-four con- 
clusions taken from his writings, and drove his adherents out of 
Oxford. Further than this they could not go. England had no 
law yet for the burning of heretics. They tried, however, to get 
Wyclif to Eome, and brought a summons from the pope; but 
Wyclif's prudence, his interest in his great work as well as his fail- 
ing health, kept him quietly at Lutterworth where he died in 1384. 
After his death his doctrines continued to spread, and many of the 



1377, 1378] THE GREAT SCHISM 413 

nobility embraced his views, the young wile of the king, Anne 
of Bohemia, being among the number. When she died her 
people carried home Wyclif 's books to become the seed of the 
Hussite movement of the next generation, , In London partic- 
ularly, the Lollards, as the followers of Wyclif were now called for 
reasons unknown, increased so rapidly that it was said when five 
men met on the street corner three of them were sure to be Lol- 
lards, Men like Courtenay, who had succeeded to the archie- 
piscopal office after the murder of Sudbury, would have undertaken 
severe measures for the suppression of the dangerous heresy, but 
the Commons would not take the preliminary steps in proposing 
the necessary laws, and the sheriffs bluntly refused to assist the 
bishops in the execution of existing laws. 

The council in the meantime was wrestling with its own prob- 
lems. The French, having driven the English out of Aquitaine, 

had turned their attention to the overthrow of English 
af^tcmmcii i^^fl^^snce in the Low Countries. The burghers of 
Rosbecque, Flanders under Philip van Arteveldt, the son of 

Edward's old ally, were again at war with their count. 
But the English council moved so slowly that they allowed van 
Arteveldt to be beaten in three successive engagements ; in the last 
of which at Rosbecque, he was slain. When the news reached Eng- 
land the consternation was great. The vast commercial interests 
of England in Flanders were in jeopardy and the loss of Calais was 
imminent. All parties were disgusted with the laggard council 
and openly denounced its sluggishness and incapacity as the sole 
cause of this new misfortune. The members of the council saw 
that if they would retain what little prestige they had left, they 
must bestir themselves to regain the lost ground and save the 
English influence in Flanders if possible. In their extremity they 
turned to a strange quarter for help. 

In 1376 Gregory XL had removed the papal residence from 
Avignon to Eome. Upon his death in March 1378 the college 

of cardinals had elected as his successor the Italian 
Schfemr-^'^* Urban VI. The election had been held in the midst 
^^'^' of a pandemonium in which a howling mob played 

a conspicuous part, who were determined that the new pope should 



414 THE PEASANT REVOLT [richard II. 

be an Italian, if not a Koman. The choice had been nominally at 
least nnaiiimous, but the imprudent zeal, the imperious nature, 
and the ungovernable temper of Urban soon turned his cardinals 
against him, so that taking advantage of the irregularity of the 
election by advancing the plea of intimidation, they retired to 
Fondi and elected Robert of Geneva under the title of Clement VII. 
The college of cardinals was fnlly re^ircsented at Fondi, and, 
although the three Italian members^ refused to give their assent to 
the choice of Clement, Urban was virtually left alone. The 
political animosities of Europe were running too high to allow the 
various governments to form an impartial judgment of the merits of 
the controversy within the church. France was interested because 
Clement was not only pronounced in his French sympathies, but 
had been chosen virtually by the French cardinals. Soon after 
his election, also, Clement retired to Avignon, which thus once 
more became a papal residence, thereby committing his court 
irrevocably to the French influence. England and the Flemings, 
therefore, naturally supported Urban, and Scotland and Spain as 
naturally supported Clement, The other states of Europe, aJso 
influenced by political reasons of one kind or another, took sides 
accordingly. Thus began the "Great Schism" which was to divide 
western Christendom for thirty-eight years. 

The rival popes soon wearied of the simple spiritual weapons 
which became their office, and resorted to the methods of violence 
so congenial to the age. Here was the opportunity of 
Norwich's the English council. At the very time when the news 
' reached England of the fatal turn of affairs in the Low 
Countries, Urban had authorized the warlike bishop of Norwich, 
Henry de Spencer, to undertake a crusade against the French sup- 
porters of Clement. The English council encouraged the enter- 
prise and in a way adopted the crusade, proposing to turn the dis- 
tractions of the church to their own advantage in the war with 
France. Parliament also gave its sanction and from all sides 
recruits flocked to the holy war. De Spencer and his crusaders 

^Sixteen cardinals had been present at the election of Urban, of 
whom eleven were French, one, a Spaniard, and four, Italians. The car- 
dinal of St. Peter's died soon after the election. 



1383-1385] THE ROYAL FAVORITES 415 

crossed to Calais and began their onslaught upon the cities of 
Count Louis in Flanders, although the Flemings were Urbanites, 
a fact which reveals the real animus of the enterprise. The expedi- 
tion, however, accomplished nothing of moment. The captains 
were bribed by the enemy and de Spencer was obliged to return 
home, greatly increasing the humiliation and confusion of the 
council. For the people were quick to ascribe the failure, not 
to the popular bishop of Norwich, but to the council and most 
to the unlucky John of Gaunt, of whom they were as unwilling 
to believe anything good as in the days before the Peasant 
Eevolt. 

Flanders now fell under the direct control of the French, and 
the English merchants were compelled to witness the ruin of their 
fine trade with the Flemings. More trouble, also, was 
campaign of brewing on the Scottish border. In 1385 Richard in 
Gaunt and company with John of Gaunt, who in spite of his long 
' series of failures still thought himself something of a 
general, crossed the borders and attempted to punish the Scots. 
But it was the old experience over again; the Scots retired, leav- 
ing their fields and their cities to be destroyed. The English 
advanced as far as the Forth and even burned Edinburgh, but 
finding no army to fight were compelled to retire at last, not 
beaten, but baffled, an outcome which, so far as the influence of the 
council was concerned, amounted to the same thing. 

Richard was now in his nineteenth year and beginning to fret 
under the imperious ways of John of Gaunt, who, while not per- 
sonally a member of the royal council, was nevertheless 
favorues^ represented by powerful friends, and had never hesi- 
tated to exert his influence. The widow of the Black 
Prince died the year of Richard's Scottish expedition and the king 
sadly missed her wise counsels. As an offset to the duke of Lan- 
caster, he had raised his two uncles Edmund Earl of Cambridge 
and Thomas Earl of Buckingham to ducal rank, making one Duke 
of York and the other Duke of Gloucester. He also surrounded 
himself with friends, the companions of his pleasures, whose 
worthlessness only increased the suspicion and contempt which the 
people were beginning to feel for the king. Of these his half- 



416 THE PEASANT REVOLT [ 



Richard II. 



brothers/ the Hollands, Thomas Earl of Kent and John Earl of 
Hnntingdon, were the kind of men to make trouble sooner or 
later; they were violent and lawless, with little respect for dignity 
or sympathy with the new traditions which the constitution had 
thrown around the crown. Another close friend of the young king 
was Michael de la Pole, the son of a wealthy London merchant, 
who had made himself very useful to Edward III. at one of those 
intervals, all too frequent, when the treasury was low and the king 
needed money. The son seems to have been a man of consider- 
able merit and had won his way to distinction very early in the 
reign of Eichard. In 1378 he had been made an admiral and 
had accompanied John of Gaunt on one of his luckless expeditions. 
In 1383 he had been appointed chancellor. Eichard took to the 
man, and finding in him a useful instrument in carrying out his 
plans, made him Earl of Suffolk. The nobles, however, 

1385. 

did not regard the elevation of the burgher's son kindly; 
while the commons also turned against him as a renegade to their 
class. But the person who stood highest in the royal affection was 
Eobert de Vere, the earl of Oxford, young, gay, and reckless, and 
the boon companion of the king in his pleasures. Eichard showered 
upon him honors and preferment; he made him Marquis of Dublin, 
the first to bear the title of marquis in England, ranking in pre- 
cedence all other nobles not of the royal family. Not satisfied with 
this Eichard finally created him Duke of Ireland ; the ducal title 
heretofore having been reserved for those of royal blood. 

The failure of John of Gaunt's Scottish campaign, and his con- 
stant quarreling with the king had destroyed what little respect 
John of ^^^^ ^t^^^ ^®lt ^o^' ^^^ once powerful noble. Leading 

Enljimid^^^^^ members of the council regarded his influence as a 
issti. menace to the prospects of their favorite, Eoger Mor- 

timer, and determined to expel the friends of Duke John. John 
of Northampton, the mayor of London, head of the duke's party 
in the Commons, was imprisoned, and the duke himself was threat- 
ened with arrest on a charge of treason. It was evident to all, to 
none more than to the duke himself, that his game of politics at home 

' The Black Prince had married Joan, daughter of the earl of Kent, 
and widow of Sir Thomas Holland. 



1386] THE ATTACK UPON THE COUNCIL 417 

was up for the present, at least, and he determined to set out on 
a madcap errand to secure the crown of Castile. He had married 
for his second wife the eldest daughter of Pedro the Cruel and 
now proposed in his wife's name to unseat the successful rival 
dynasty. He left England, therefore, in 1386 and did not return 
again for three years. 

If Richard and his council thought to strengthen their positioh 

by the expulsion of John of Gaunt's friends, they soon found that 

they were seriously mistaken. For two new men were 

The forming '' , . ,. . t. , 

of anew now brought into solitary prominence: Thomas Duke 
of Gloucester, John of Gaunt's youngest brother, a man 
fully as unscrupulous and even more dangerous, who had no ugly 
memories back of him; and John of Gaunt's son, Henry of Boling- 
broke, the earl of Derby. The withdrawal of John of Gaunt 
made possible, also, a union of the old Lancastrians with the old 
clerical party. A new party was thus formed, composed of the vari- 
ous dissatisfied elements of the upper classes, who now affected to 
pose as the defenders of the rights of parliament against the king 
and the council. 

An opportunity was soon afforded the new party for a direct 

attack upon the hated favorites of the king. In the early part of 

1386, the people were thrown into a spasm of alarm by 

Attac'k %i.pon . , . . 

the council, a genuine war scare, due to the gathering ot an arma- 
ment in the harbor of Sluys for the purpose of a descent 
upon Englaml. Although the French soon abandoned the plan, 
popular apprehension had been wrought to fever heat, and when 
parliament met the leaders were inclined to make the government, 
particularly de la Pole, the chancellor, responsible for all the 
reverses of the past ten years. The recent promotion of de Vere 
was also a source of irritation. The new parliament, therefore, 
was in anything but a tractable mood, and soon gave evidence of 
its spirit by demanding the dismissal of the chancellor. The 
king, whose head had always been befogged more or less by pecul- 
iar ideas of prerogative, insolently replied that he would not 
dismiss the meanest scullion in his kitchen for such a request, 
and bade parliament keep to its own business. But the members 
stubbornly refused to consider any other question until the obnox- 



418 THE PEASANT EEVOLT [richard ii. 

ious de la Pole had been removed, and Eichard, who was not proof 
against their determined spirit, yielded. The minister was then 
impeached, fined, and imprisoned. The removal of the chancellor 
was only the first step in the program of the opposition. In imi- 
tation of the Good Parliament, on the plea that the revenues were 
squandered and mismanaged generally, the lords proceeded to 
appoint a commission of regency to Cjontrol the administration, 
thus practically depriving the king of his authority altogether. 
They, further, called up the bogy of Edward II. by sending for the 
statute under which he had been deposed, at the same time dis- 
patching a friend of Gloucester to remind the king of the fate of 
that unhappy monarch. 

Eichard yielded for the moment but the old Plantagenet spirit 

was now fairly aroused. After parliament had adjourned he 

released Suffolk and summoned a meeting of the sheriffs 

defies pariia- and iListices of the kinffdom to meet him at Nottingf- 
ment. . 

ham. He urged the sheriffs to allow no knight to be sent 

to parliament "save one whom the king and the council chose." 

lie asked a committee of judges, also, to pass upon the legality of 

the acts of the last parliament, and without a dissenting voice, 

apparently, they declared that the removal of the chancellor and 

the appointment of the commission were unlawful, and that those 

who had forced the king to yield against his will were liable to the 

charge of treason. 

The leaders of the opposition now in their turn became 

alarmed, and answered the charge of the judges by appearing at the 

head of an army of 40,000 men. Eichard thought of 

The "Lords 

Appellant." resistance, but the prompt action of his enemies entirely 
Bridge, Dec. disconcerted him. London opened its gates, and five 

Of) T^fiy 

lords, Gloucester, Derby, Arundel, Thomas Beauchamp 
Earl of Warwick, and Thomas Mowbray Earl of Nottingham, 
entered the king's presence and "appealed of treason" five of his 
late councillors : de Vere, de la Pole, Eobert Tresilian the chief 
justice. Sir Nicholas Bramber, and George Neville Archbishop of 
York. In the meanwhile the enemies of Gloucester had fled from 
the city in various disguises. De Vere went into Chester and suc- 
ceeded in raising an army of 5,000 men. In December he 



1387-1390] THE WONDERFUL PARLIAMENT 419 

approached London, but was met at Eadcot Bridge on the Thames 
by Derby and Gloucester, and his little army dispersed. He him- 
self escaped by swimming the river and finally got away to Ireland. 
The parliament, known sometimes as the "Wonderful Parlia- 
ment," and sometimes as the "Merciless Parliament," met in 

February, 1388, and in a session of 122 days devoted 
The Wonder- .i i i ^ 

fuiParUa- itself to ridding the country of the enemies of Glou- 

cester. The four lay councillors of the king were con- 
demned to be hanged, but only Tresilian and Bramber suffered, 
since de Vere and de la Pole were safe on the continent. Neville, 
the ecclesiastical member of the council, could not be condemned 
to death, being a churchman, but his temporalities were seized. 
Of other supporters of the king, many were banished, and some 
including his old tutor Sir Simon Burley were sent to the block. 
Then after Richard had been stripped of all his earlier advisers 
even to his private confessor, the parliament broke up and left the 
government in the hands of Gloucester and his friends. 

For some months Richard quietly submitted to the new order, 

but at a council meeting held in the following May, he suddenly 

propounded to the duke of Gloucester the question of 

Richard j-^jg aorg "Your highness," replied the duke, "is in your 

assumes the & & ' i: ' j 

government, twenty-second year." "Then," replied the king, "I 
must be old enough to manage my own affairs. I thank 
you my lords, for the trouble you have taken in my behalf 
hitherto, but I shall not require your services any longer." He 
then demanded the Great Seal and the keys of the Exchequer. 
Yet Richard apparently had really learned something from his 
earlier misfortunes, for he adopted a policy which was surely 
moderate for a man of his character. He refused to recall de 
Vere or the exiled judges. He installed William of Wykeham in 
his old position as chancellor. York and Derby, also, were retained. 
But Gloucester and the otlier members of the council were sum- 
marily dismissed. Richard was still further strengthened by the 
return of John of Gaunt the same year, who, although as unpop- 
ular as ever, had been apparently sobered somewhat by his many 
failures and now sincerely tried to serve his young sovereign. In 
1390 Henry of Derby left England for three years, to assist the 



420 THE PEASANT REVOLT [ Richard II. 

German knights in their wars against the Lithuanians. Other lords 
conspicuous in the earlier troubles also found occupation far from 
the court. 

The new reign was now fairly launched. There had been much 
quarreling of politicians for the control of the government; but 

experience had taught England to expect this as an inci- 
personai dent of the rule of a nonaged king. Now that the 

king had asserted himself, this quarreling might be 
expected to stop. The young king was not without elements of 
popularity. The people still cherished the memory of the Black 
Prince and the "fair Joan," and were ready to open their hearts 
to the son. He was clever, handsome, and cultivated. He had 
proved himself capable of meeting an emergency in the trying 
days of the Peasant Eevolt, and by his recent moderation he had 
also proved that he could learn from experience. Hence confi- 
dence rapidly returned and for eight years Richard fully justified 
the hopes of his people; no king could have done better. A new 
series of truces gave some respite from the burdens of the war, and 
enabled the ministers to reduce taxation. Wages continued good 
and prices steady. New safeguards also were added to the Statutes 
of Provisors and Praemunire, The Statute of Mortmain was 
enlarged to forbid the granting of estates to laymen in trust for 
religious houses, — a practice by which the older statute had been 
virtually rendered a dead letter. 

Richard while quite young had been married to Anne of 
Bohemia. He seems to have loved her devotedly and even to have 

allowed her considerable influence when once he was his 
The 
marriage of own master. But in 1304 Anne died, and as Richard 

7? i,()Jin,v(X 

was still childless, Roger Mortimer Earl of March was 
formally recognized as heir to the throne. The year of the 
queen's death also saw the death of Constance of Castile, the 
second wife of John of Gaunt. He at once married Catharine 
Swynford, a sister-in-law of Chaucer, who had already born him 
several children. These children and their descendants, known as 
the Beauforts, will bear their full share in the dynastic struggles 
of the next century. In 1396 Richard succeeded in making a 
truce of twenty-eight years with France. He then went to Paris 



1396] FALL OF THE LORDS APPELLANT 421 

and amid great pomp married Isabella, the eight-year-old daughter 

of Charles VI. 

The marriage was not a happy one for king or people. For 

two generations Englishmen had known little of the French court 

and its ways; but now its splendors, great even when 

French emanating from so feeble a personality as Charles VI., 

Court. , °,. i.n •, ,. 

burst upon this young king, who saw at last a realiza- 
tion of his early dreams of kingly power and could not but com- 
pare his own slavery to insolent parliaments and obstinate 
ministers, with the freedom and magnificence which tradition and 
custom assigned to a French monarch. It was a dangerous 
dream, for Richard's temper was none of the steadiest and had 
already led him into unseemly outbreaks. He loved not con- 
straint, and as England was then constituted, he could not king 
it long after his new ideal, before he would run ujd against obduracy 
sufficient to try a far more placid soul. 

The first effects of these new ideas of kingly dignity were 
noticeable in a very marked increase in the magnificence of the 

trappings of court life. Eichard, like his grandfather, 
Conmiom"^ sot the pace in foppish extravagance, paying, it is said, 

as much as £10,000 for a single coat. The sober minded 
burghers who were taxing themselves to keep up this show of 
kingly magnificence did not take to it kindly, and in 1397 the 
Commons presented to the Lords a formal complaint against the 
extravagance of the royal household. The Lords were more than 
half inclined to report upon the matter favorably, when news of it 
readied the king. Before his violent outburst of wrath both 
Lords and Commons gave way and humbly apologized, Avhile Sir 
Thomas Haxey, the mover of the motion, narrowly escaped death 
as a traitor. 

Richard thought he had learned his strength and determined 
to follow up his advantage. He was upon good terms with John 

of Gaunt; he was sure of the support of his half- 
LordsAppei- brothers, the Hollands, of Edward, the son of the duke 

of York, and of Thomas Mowbray, the earl of Notting- 
ham. In July, therefore, he suddenly arrested Gloucester, Arundel, 
and Warwick and threw them into prison. In September he called 



422 THE PEASANT EEVOLT [richard II. 

at Westminster a parliament composed of bis partisans. He was 
also careful to see that no attempt at armed interference should 
be made and stationed a band of 4,000 Cheshire archers in Palace 
Yard. The old acts of 1387 and 1388 were raked up against the 
three "Lords Appellant." Arundel was tried, convicted of treason, 
and executed the same day ; the duke of Lancaster as Lord High 
Steward pronouncing the sentence npon his old friend. Gloncester 
died in prison at Calais under circumstances which snggest foul 
play. Warwick was sentenced to a life imprisonment on the 
Isle of Man; Archbishop Thomas Fitz-Alan, brother of Arundel, 
was banished. The king's supporters were then rewarded with 
grants of lands and titles, and the parliament adjourned to meet 
at Shrewsbury in January. The Cheshire archers were again called 
out, and Richard's friends continued their work. The acts of 
the Wonderful Parliament were annulled. Older measures were 
called up, as the statutes against the Despensers, and wherever they 
abridged the king's authority they were repealed. Not content 
with this, as though they would put from themselves the tempta- 
tion of ever pulling down the fine structure which they were rais- 
ing, the parliament granted Richard the customs on wool and 
leather for the rest of his life. Then by a rare act of suicide the 
parliament delegated its authority to a committee of eighteen of 
the king's partisans, with John of Gaunt as president. The revo- 
lution was complete. All that England had won by the struggle 
of two centuries had been swept away in a single year. One can 
hardly believe that this was the v/ork of a single madman. More- 
over, if Richard were mad, the men who acted with him and shared 
the rewards of his treason to the constitution, certainly were not. 
The entire affair appears rather like a diabolical plot of a group of 
cunning politicians to overthrow the safeguards of the constitution 
for selfish ends. Richard himself was entirely capable of leading- 
such a conspiracy. He was bold and daring, and possessed an 
utter contempt for established principles, coupled with an 
unbounded estimate of the royal prerogative, an inheritance from 
his old tutor Simon Burley. If he failed, it was not because the 
times were not ripe for such a revolution, but simply because he 
overshot the mark; for in sweeping away all the guarantees of law, 



1397] TYRAIS^NIES OF RICHARD 423 

he compelled the very men who had supported him to undo their 
work in self-defense. 

Here was Eichard's weakness. He could not inspire confidence 
in his followers. He had liberally rewarded the men who sup- 
ported him but still they did not trust him. Men like 
of Baling- his cousin, Henry of Derby, now duke of Hereford, or 
Thomas of Nottingham, now duke of Norfolk, knew 
that the king could not forget the part which they had once taken 
in "appealing" the favorites de Vere and Suffolk of treason. 
Moreover as they distrusted the king they feared each other. Some 
hot words of Norfolk, in which the king's veracity was questioned, 
were reported by Hereford, but denied by Norfolk. The per- 
manent committee to which parliament had delegated its powers 
ordered the' two to settle the question by single combat. But 
Richard, who thought it was a good opportunity to get rid of both 
men, at the last moment forbade the combat and banished Norfolk 
for life and Hereford for ten years. The act was not only one of 
great injustice on Eichard's part but a serious mistake as well; for 
Hereford was deeply loved by the people and they now looked upon 
him as a martyr. When he left London, the gathered crowds shed 
tears, and some of the people in their devotion followed him as far 
as the coast. 

But, as if this Avere not enough, Richard proceeded to build up 
a party for the duke of Hereford, should the time come when a 
party would be needed. He assembled his bodyguard 
Richard^ "^ ^^ Cheshire archers and rode through the country, com- 
pelling the nobles and gentry to take an oath to support 
the acts of the last parliament. He compelled his merchants, also, 
to make him loans. He placed blank charters before men who 
were known to possess fortunes and forced them to fix their seals, 
leaving him to write in the charter what he pleased. He levied 
blackmail upon the panic stricken remnant of Gloucester's friends 
by compelling them to buy their pardons. He even levied upon 
the shires as a whole, compelling seventeen counties to redeem 
tliemselves from the charge of assisting the enemies of the crown. 
In February 1399, John of Gaunt died, and the king added yet 
another grievance to Hereford's growing list, by declaring all 



424 THE PEASAN'T EEVOLT [richard ii. 

the vast Lancastrian estates forfeited, and seizing them for his 
own use. 

The king, of course, was not without some specious plea by 
which he sought to Justify these acts of despotic power. For more 
than two hundred years England had been wrestling with 
ireimui^ "^ ^®^ Irish problem, and at the end of the fourteenth cen- 
tury could show only a few districts about Dublin, "the 
English Pale" so called, as the sole result of her endeavors to 
secure a footing in Ireland for English law. Neither English nor 
Irish could gain upon the other. Marauding forays, midnight 
alarm and slaughter, were events of daily life in this unfortunate 
land, and even when the two races showed a tendency to live on 
better terms, it was the policy of the government to keep them 
asunder by foolish laws. Edward III, had made it a crime 
for an Englishman to acquire the Irish language, or to 

The Statute o & 5 

of Kiikennjj, marry into an Irish family. Yet the laws of nature 
had proved stronger than the statute laws of England, 
and the change which had once taken place in Normandy, and had 
again taken place in England, was steadily progressing within the 
boundaries of English Ireland. The descendants of the men who 
had come with Strongbow were merging in the subject race and 
becoming almost more Irish than the Irish themselves. In 1386 
Richard had sent Robert de Vere to Ireland, commissioned to com- 
plete the conquest and bring the Irish troubles to a close. But the 
Lords Appellant had defeated this scheme. Then the truce with 
France had enabled the king to turn his personal attention to Ire- 
land. Little, however, had been accomplished because the English 
lords made as much trouble as the Irish princes, and the king could 
find no loyal party to make the foundation of an English rule. In 
1398, the earl of March, who had been left in charge as lieutenant 
of the crovr^n, was killed in battle, and Richard determined again 
to go to Ireland in person to avenge the fall of the heir to the 
crown, and try once more to bring order out of this wretched chaos. 
It was upon the plea of raising a force sufficient for this war that 
Richard had entered into the course of spoliations and confisca- 
tions that culminated in robbing Henry of Hereford of his family 
estates. 



1399] - DEPOSITIOlsr OF RICHARD 425 

Soon after Whitsuntide Eichard sailed for Ireland, leaving the 

kingdom to the care of his uncle, Edmund of York, as regent. But 

on July 4, Duke Henry landed at Kavenspur, accom- 

Henrij,Juhj panied by a band of exiles as desperate and determined 

4 1399. J. ^ -L , 

as himself. He moved with the caution of a man who 
knew well the nature of the dangerous game which he was playing. 
He came, he announced, to claim the Lancastrian inheritance and 
nothing more. The barons of the north, led by the powerful 
Percies, were the first to Join him. As he proceeded south the 
latent discontent of the kingdom everywhere found voice; the 
shires rose; London went mad in its enthusiasm. On the 27th 
Edmund of York also abandoned the cause of Eichard. On the 
29th three of Eichard's councillors, ^crope. Bushy, and Green, were 
taken at Bristol and put to death. 

Eichard's kingdom was now lost. He hurried back with the 
army which he had taken with him to Ireland, only to have it 

dwindle in a single day from 30,000 men to 6,000. 
of Riciiard, Salisbury had attempted to raise an army for him in 

3ept. 30, 1399. . . . 

Wales, but it had speedily dispersed under the influence 
of the general panic which had seized upon all the king's friends. 
Henry, who had continued to disguise his real purpose, persuaded 
Eichard to meet him at Flint for a conference, and Eichard, who 
still thought that the most that awaited him was a new council of 
regency, walked into the trap. But his illusion was soon dispelled. 
He was taken to London and thrown into the Tower, and on the 
29th of September, the day before the time set for the meeting of 
parliament, was compelled to set his seal to a formal abdication, 
declaring himself incapable of governing and willing to be deposed. 
When parliament came together on the 30th Henry had the abdi- 
cation ready and at once secured a formal sentence of deposition. 
Thirty-three charges were brought against the king; all serious 
and weighty, and bearing directly upon the great constitutional 
principles which for two hundred years had been struggling for 
utterance and now were at last to be heard. In the IGth article 
it was alleged that the king had declared "that his laws were in his 
own mouth and that he alone could change and frame the laws of 
the land." In the 26th, "that tlie life of every liegeman, his 



426 THE PEASANT REVOLT [richabd II. 

lands, goods, and chattels, lay at his royal will without sentence of 
forfeiture." 

Then Henry stepped forward, and crossing himself, solemnly 
claimed the vacant throne: "In the name of God, I, Henry of 

Lancaster, challenge this realm and the crown with all 
^anca^ier ^^^ appurtenances, as I am descended by right line of 
crtjwn^^^'^ blood, from the good King Henry III., and through 

that right, that God of his grace hath sent me with 
help of my kin and my friends to receive it; the which realm was 
in point to be undone by default of governance and undoing of good 
laws." The plea was accepted without a dissenting voice, and the 
two archbishops led the champion to the vacant throne. A great 
revolution had been carried out, and, an unusual thing in those 
days, no blood had been shed save of the three who were slain at 
Bristol. 

Edward II. had failed because he had not taken his crown seri- 
ously. Kichard II. failed because he had taken his crown too 
seriously. He had been brought up in the atmosphere breathed 
by the degenerate court of Edward III. Its hollow magnificence, 
its pride, its extravagance in life and thought were to the boy mind 
realities. Simon Burley had taught him to regard himself as 
superior to men and to institutions. Ambitious and crafty uncles 
had played upon his weakness to further their own ends, and at 
last persuaded him to try his hand at high prerogative; and when 
he found himself confronted by wills every whit as imperious as 
his own, his temper, which was never under safe control, broke 
forth in a frenzy of despotic violence. Then it became necessary 
for the very men whose shortsightedness had made this exhibition 
of tyranny possible, to unmake their Caesar in self-defense. But in 
order to secure themselves and justify their treason, they were 
obliged to fall back upon the "good laws" which Eichard had 
repudiated, and call the nation to their support. Thus what had 
begun in a miserable quarrel of politicians, ended in a revolution of 
the gravest constitutional significance. 



CHAPTEE Yl 

THE COlfSTITUTIONAL KINGS OP THE HOUSE OP LANCASTER 
THE THIRD STAGE OP THE HUNDRED TEARS' WAR 



HENRY W., 1399-1413 
HENRY r., 1413-U22 



THE HOUSE OF LANCASTER 
Henry III. 



Thomas 2d earl of Lancaster 
Beheaded at Pontefract 
after Boroughbridge, 1333 



HENRY v., 1413-1423 

I 
HENRY VL, 1423-1461 



Edmund " Croiichback," 
1st earl of Lancaster 



Henry 3d earl of Lancaster, 
d. 1345 

Henry 4th earl of Lancaster; 
1352 1st duke of Lancaster 

Blanche of Lancaster = John of 
Gaunt, who by right of wife 
became 3d duke of Lancas- 
ter in 1360 

Henry of Bolingbroke disinher- 
ited by Richard II., recovers 
estates and becomes King of 
England as Henry IV., 1399 



Thomas 

Duke of Clarence, 
killed 1421 



John Humphrey 

Duke of Bedford, Duke of Gloucester, 
d. 1435 d. 1447 



The greatness of the House of Lancaster dates hack to the thir- 
teenth century ; and, in a way, may be regarded as a remote result 

of the loss of the Angevin possessions. It had been the 
The found- policy of the Norman and early Angevin kings to pro- 
Home r/f yj(^g fQY the younger members of the royal family out 

of their numerous foreign dependencies; but Henry 
III., in consequence of John's misfortunes, was compelled to make 
provision for the princes of the royal family at home. Accord- 
ingly, he made his brother Eichard, Earl of Cornwall; his eldest 
son Edward, Earl of Chester, and upon his second son Edmund 
Crouchback he conferred the earldoms of Lancaster, Derby, and 
Leicester. To these vast estates of the new House of Lancaster, 

427 



428 LAJSrCASTEK AKD THE CONSTITUTION [heneyIV. 

Thomus, the second earl, added by marriage Lincoln and Salisbury. 
In 1353 Edward III. still further exalted the family by conferring 
the ducal title upon Henry, the fourth earl, as a reward for his 
services in Aquitaine; a title which had been first introduced in 
England in 1337, when the Black Prince was made Duke of Corn- 
wall. The daughter and heiress of this Duke Henry once more 
linked the fortunes of her house directly with the royal family by 
marryiiig Edward's fourth son, John of Gaunt; and upon the 
death of Henry, by feudal law, all the vast possessions of the Lan- 
castrian House, as well as the new ducal title, passed to the hus- 
band of Blanche. The son of this marriage was Henry of 
Boliugbroke, the successor of Eichard II. 

In France where a similar practice of building up the younger 

branches of the royal family had also prevailed since the thirteenth 

century, the policy might be justified by the desire of 

remm of , the crown to surround itself by a powerful nobility of the 

creating the , ■, -, ^ ^ • n 

great ducal blood royal as a balance to the influence of the old 
feudal nobility. In England, however, where the power 
of the older baronage had long since been broken, and where the 
crown had developed powerful administrative and judicial systems 
sufficient to check any revival of feudal forms, no such plea could 
be advanced. But in either case the policy was a serious blunder. 
The royal dukes were too powerful to remain loyal subjects ; and, 
more turbulent and troublesome than the older baronage, more 
dangerous also because of their nearness to the crown, were certain, 
whenever an issue came to open quarrel, to furnish a rallying point 
for all the disaffected elements of the nation. In France the rival- 
ries of the two ducal houses of Burgundy and Orleans distracted 
the kingdom for a generation, and after all but placing the crown in 
the hands of the English, transferred the quarrel to the larger 
arena of the great Hapsburg-Valois straggle which desolated west- 
ern Europe for a century. In England the dacal House of Lan- 
caster, after undermining the throne of Edward II., and bringing 
shame and confusion upon the declining years of Edward III., 
finally put itself at the head of an armed protest against the 
usurpations of Kichard II., and succeeded in supplanting the elder 
line of Plantagenet altogether. 



1399] POSITION^ OE NEW DYNASTY 429 

The position of the new dynasty had both its strength and its 
weakness. Henry IV. posed as the defender of "the good laws of 
The strength *^^ land," or, in the language of the modern politician, 
n^'sposi- ^^ ^^^^ constitution. He was, moreover, astute enough 
tion. ^Q ggg ^}jg yalne of this position as a political program, 

and consciously adopted as the threefold policy of the Lancastrian 
House, obedience to the laws, respect for parliament, and an alli- 
ance with the conservative elements of the nation, represented by 
the church and the nobility. During the reigns of the first two 
Lancastrians the wisdom of this policy was fully justified by the 
results. The nobility regarded the Lancastrian king as one of 
themselves; there were revolts of nobles but not of the nobility. 
The commons also trusted the king and in the main supported him 
loyally. The church saw in him the defender of its privileges and 
the champion of its doctrines; gave to his needs without grudging 
and made his quarrels its own. 

The weakness of the Lancastrians' position lay in the fact that 

they had been borne to the throne by a revolution, and not by 

strict hereditary right. In a legal age, when the 
Its weaJiiiess. ./ o o o ' 

authority of parliament to break the iron law of custom 

was hardly yet recognized, this flaw in the Lancastrian title was a 
serious matter and was certain to be challenged by the elder branch 
of the royal house, as soon as the immediate issue which had 
brought Henry to the throne had been forgotten. Henry appar- 
ently was fully conscious that his legal title to the crown would not 
bear serious scrutiny. Hence in the claim which he so dramatically 
advanced in the parliament of 1399, he had ingeniously mixed up 
three distinct claims, no one of which could stand alone in an ordi- 
nary court of law.^ Yet the nation was favorable to Henry; all 

1 In the claim by descent from Henry III. lie sought apparently to 
take advantage of a foolish story which had been set afloat by the flat- 
terers of John of Gaunt : that Edmund Crouchback was the elder sou of 
Henry III. and had been set aside by reason of a physical deformity. It 
was well known that Edward I. was six years the senior of Edmund, and 
also that Edmund had won his nickname not on account of any actual 
def oriuity , but by reason of the Crusaders' cross which he ever wore on 
his back. 



430 LANCASTER AND THE CONSTITUTION [henry IV. 

classes needed him, and no one was disposed to inquire too carefully 
into the question of birthright. 

If Henry's position had any foundation at all in law, it lay 

in the right of parliament to determine the royal succession. 

This had been undoubtedly an ancient right of the 

Right of great council, but it had been seldom used, and then 

parliament o ' ' 

%m^^^^'^' ^^^ ^^ sanction a revolution already accomplished. In 
a day, moreover, when parliaments represented not tho 
nation but the faction of the baronage who for the moment con- 
trolled the machinery of election, its right to make kings was a 
dangerous doctrine to revive, and none understood better than 
Henry himself, how easily it might be wrested to his own undoing. 
To admit it, was to strike at the very stability of the government ; 
hence the shrewd cunning with which Henry, while accepting the 
crown at the bands of parliament, yet ignored parliament in mak- 
ing his claim. 

Thus after all the subterfuges of the politician have been brushed 
away, it will be seen that Henry's real title rested upon the right 
of successful revolution, and was strong because sup- 
(if Henry's ported by the voice of the nation represented in the parlia- 
ment of 1399. A precedent had been established which 
was to mean much in future centuries when the Commons should 
constitute the controlling element in the parliament; but in the 
early fifteenth century the nobles and not the Commons gave dig- 
nity and force to the voice of parliament. Hence the revolution 
of 1.399 was after all a victory of the later day barons over the 
crown. That it was accomj)lished in the name of the law, must 
not obscure its real character. Only so can we understand the 
real weakness of tbe so-called constitutional rule of the House of 
Lancaster or explain the pit of anarchy into which it finally plunged 
the English state. 

Henry was a man of fair abilities, naturally religious, temjDcrate 

in habits, well balanced in temper. He was not cruel by choice; 

but he did not hesitate to shed blood if he could not 

The coiiciU- • 1 ■ ■, , -1 T TT X 1 

atory pounj gain his end by milder measures. He was too good a 

politician, moreover, not to see that the party in power 

could afford to be generous and that excessive cruelty was certain 



1399, 1400] THE LAST OF THE FAVOEITES 431 

to breed reaction. Hence the first acts of Henry's" reign are, for 
the times, remarkable for self-restraint. The lords who had stood 
by Eichard and abetted his usurpations and shared in the plunder, 
v/ere compelled to forfeit all that they had received from him in the 
way of titles and lands since the fall of Gloucester in 1397. Some 
called for their blood, but it was not in accord with Henry's policy 
to push the fallen to extremes. Appeals of treason in parliament, 
the "cause of so many revolutions" in the past, were forbidden. 
A man charged with treason was henceforth to be tried in a reg- 
ular court of law, and the crime limited to offenses specified by 
statute. 

A deputation of lords, headed by Archbishop Arundel and the 
duke of York, urged Henry to put Richard to death. This cer- 
tainly could be done under the forms of law ; for Eich- 
Ricfiard "^ ^"^^ ^^^^ ^^^^ ^ subject and also resting under serious 
charges preferred by parliament. But Henry probably 
saw that to destroy Eichard would only transfer Eichard's claim to 
the powerful family of the Mortimers who, with their connections 
among the Percies, would be far more dangerous rivals than the 
lonely man now shut up safely in the Lancastrian stronghold of 
Pontefract in Yorkshire. 

The immediate friends and kinsmen of Eichard, however, had 

neither been conciliated nor awed by the judgments of Henry and 

took advantage of his leniency to plot for a counter revolution. 

They proposed to surprise Henry at Windsor, cut him 

The trst re- j r r r j ' ^ 

voit.'Janu- off from the support of London and proclaim Eichard. 

(17*11 1^400 

A priest named Maudelyn, who was the ex-king's double, 
was to play Eichard's part until the conspirators could fijid Eich- 
ard himself, whose place of confinement seems to have been a 
secret. .At the last moment the earl of Eutland let his father into 
the ]Aot and York without a moment's delay warned Henry. 
Henry by a memorable night ride hastened to London, roused the 
populace, and within twenty-four hours took the field at the head 
of twenty thousand men. The conspirators fled westward to 
Cirencester, proclaiming Eichard as they passed along. The coun- 
try people rose at the name, but not as the plotters had designed. 
They flocked into Cirencester and, with the mayor leading them, 



432 LANCASTER AND THE CONSTITUTION [hexry IV. 

attacked the house of the conspirators and compelled them to sur- 
render. Kent and Salisbury were at once put to death. Hunt- 
ingdon was in London but fled into Essex where he was straightway- 
taken and dispatched by the populace. Lord Spenser met a like 
fate at Bristol, and Eichard's double was ingloriously hanged at 
the Elms. 

The effect of the plot was threefold. It revealed the popularity 
of Henry among the people, and determined the uselessness of 
attempting a counter revolution. It gave proof of the 
Effect of the hatred of the populace for the friends of Eichard, and 
Daitii of revealed to the survivors how little they had to expect 
if they once fell into the hands of the mob. It also 
sealed the fate of Eichard. The date and manner of his death, 
however, are unknown. A month after the conspiracy had col- 
lapsed, a body supposed to be that of the late king was exhibited 
and buried at Langley. 

Henry had now triumphed over the friends of Eichard but his 
troubles had only begun. Since the recognition of David by 
Edward III. in 1357, the English and Scottish kings 
and the ' had been generally on terms of peace ; but it was impos- 
sible for either king to restrain his fiery border lords, 
and their ceaseless raids had kept the neighboring lands in constant 
alarm. The battle of Otterburn, better known as "Chevy Chase," 
belongs to this period. The truce which Eichard had made hud 
expired in 1399, and it was very important for Henry that it be 
renewed. The French court was not in any kindly mood toward 
the new English king, who had dethroned Charles VI. 's son-in-law, 
and had- not only refused to recognize Henry, but had promptly 
demanded that Eichard's child widow be sent home with her 
dowry. This Henry was not prepared to do, and a renewal of the 
French war was one of the probabilities of the near future. It 
was of great importance, therefore, for Henry to secure a pledge 
of neutrality from the Scots, and when the Scots hesitated, he 
determined to bring the matter to an issue and crossed the border. 
But the Scots declined to give battle, and, although Henry burned 
Leith and harried much country, he was forced to return without 
securing the object of his expedition. 



1400-1402] OWEK GLENDOWER 433 

The failure of the attempt to overawe Scotland was humiliat- 
ing enough, but the campaign had not yet ended when a new storm 
broke on the Welsh border. From the time of Edward 
The rising I. 's conquest, the Welsh had remained fairly peaceful 
Giendower and Were learning to consider themselves a part of the 
English kingdom. But the same lawless spirit which 
had made English nobles so hard to restrain east of the Severn, 
had asserted itself with even greater license among the wild glens 
of the west and was borne with no good grace by a people naturally 
excitable and quick to requite wrongs. Collisions between the 
Welsh and their English lords were matters of daily occurrence. 
In these petty conflicts a Welsh landowner, Owen Glendower, 
managed to gather a band of desperate men and soon developed a 
genius for the irregular warfare of the hills, and assuming the title 
of Prince of Wales gave to the insurrection the dignity of a 
national rising. All Henry's efforts to reduce him proved 
futile. Grlendower retired into the mountains, and from inacces- 
sible crags defied the English until the approach of winter com- 
pelled them to withdraw. Then Henry turned the borders over 
to Henry Percy, whose experience and success in this kind of war- 
fare in the north, where he had won the name of "Hotspur," 
peculiarly qualified him for such work. But Hotspur found his 
match in Glendower. He could not protect the open country and 
held even his castles with difficulty. In 1402 Glendower defeated 
Edmund Mortimer, brother of the late earl of March, at Brynglas 
and took Mortimer himself prisoner. Henry again took the field, 
but after an inglorious campaign of three weeks, completely baffled 
by his wily foe, he was glad to get his famished army out of the 
wretched country. 

In the meanwhile, in marked contrast with these humiliating 
experiences of Henry, the Percies had won a brilliant victory over 
the Scots at Homildon Hill, capturing Douglas and 
Hiufm^. Murdoch Stuart, the earl of Fife. This victory deliv- 
ered the northern border, but soon brought fresh trouble 
for Henry. The wars which had been thrust upon him had pre- 
vented the reduction of taxation. The people, moreover, could not 
forgive his repeated failures; it mattered little to them that his 



434 LANCASTER AND THE CONSTITUTION [hknby IV. 

poverty, the result of the niggardliness of parliament on the one 
hand and of his own scrupulous observance of the laws on the 
other, was largely responsible ; Henry had failed and the glory of 
the popular idol was dimmed. 

The storm broke where Henry perhaps had least reason to 

expect it. The Percies had been among his staunchest supporters. 

They had been the first to rally to his standard after 

The first rvi- the lauding at Eaveuspur. For two years they had 

ijig of the o j. ^ j 

Percies, i4(>2. borue the brunt of the border wars ; they had fought 
Henry's battles with their own retainers and had poured 
out their treasure to the extent of £G0,000. Henry had repaid 
two-thirds of this debt but the balance of £20,000 still remained, 
and although the condition in which parliament kept the royal 
treasury made a further payment impossible, the Percies were 
inclined to hold the king responsible, and ascribed his backwardness 
to the fact that he did not appreciate their services. Homiklon Hill, 
also, had turned the Percy head somewhat, and when the king refused 
to allow Hotspur to ransom Edmund Mortimer, who was his wife's 
brother, the Percies in their anger entered into a widely extended 
conspiracy for the overthrow of Henry, in which Douglas, Morti- 
mer, and Glendower, were all to take part. Under the pretext of 
invading Wales, Hotspur led his border raiders into Cheshire where 
he at once raised his standard, publicly charging Henry with the 
murder of Richard and further accusing him of breaking his word 
in collecting taxes contrary to law and of interfering in the elec- 
tion of the parliament; he also proposed to make his little nephew, 
the earl of March, king. The Cheshire men, who had always been 
loyal to Richard, rallied at Hotspur's call and 
jitn/'af'S" enabled him to march upon Shrewsbury at the 
head of 14,000 men. Here Prince Henry, the 
king's eldest son, was stationed, and Hotspur laid siege to the 
place thinking that Glendower would join him. But the approach 
of the king compelled him to retire to a position three miles north 
of the city where some high ground offered an advantage to his 
Cheshire archers. The king attacked him, July 21, 1403, and 
gained a complete victory. Tlie battle began at midday and did 
not end until night. It was one of the most obstinately contested 



1405-1407] THE KISING OP THE PEKCIES 435 

battles fought in England in two centuries. Hotspur fell ; his 
uncle, Thomas Percy the earl of Worcester, and Douglas were 
taken. Two days later Thomas Percy was put to death ; Hotspur's 
head was set up on London Bridge and the people were allowed 
the satisfaction of gazing at the ghastly trophy for a month. 
Hotspur's father, the old earl of Northumberland, surrendered at 
York as soon as he heard of the results of Shrewsbury. 

Henry's troubles with his barons were by no means ended. 
The experience of Hotspur had taught them caution, but they were 

more dangerous because they worked in secret. Henry, 
rMng'rrf^tle t^owevcr, was on his guard and in 1405 foiled an 
p&rcies, i-ms- attempt to carry off the earl of March, whom he was 

safeguarding at Windsor. This attempt was speedily 
followed by a second rising of the earl of Northumberland, whom 
Henry had not only pardoned but restored to his estates. He was 
supported by Thomas Mowbray Earl of Nottingham, the son of the 
late duke of Norfolk, and Eichard le Scrope, Archbishop of York. 
Henry determined to show that his magnanimity hitherto had not 
been dictated by any fear of his barons and when Mowbray and 
Scrope fell into his power, he at once hurried them to the block. 
It was a wholesome lesson; for up to this time, a bishop's person, 
it had been supposed, was sacred, and kings had hesitated to shed 
a bishop's blood, although more than one had richly deserved it. 
Englishmen heard of the deed with the horror which they had 
once felt at the assassination of Becket; and like Becket, Scrope 
was raised into a sort of popular sanctity; miracles were reported 
at his tomb, and the failing health of the king, really due to the 
strain of so many cares and so much anxiety, was popularly 
ascribed to the sacrilege of sending a bishop to public execution. 
Percy fled to France, and secured a promise of French aid. In 
1407 he returned by way of Scotland and invaded his old terri- 
tories at the head of a Scottish force. But the Northumberland 

strongholds were now all in the hands of the king 
Moor^im. ^^^ ^^^y ^ ^^^ ^^ Percy's old tenants rallied at his 

call. Then he tried his fortunes in Yorkshire, but 
the people here also were weary of these profitless risings, and left 
him to be overcome and slain by the sheriff at Bramham Moor. 



436 LANCASTER AKD THE CONSTITUTION [henry IV. 

With the fall of Northumberland Henry's troubles with his 
barons ended. 

The tide was now tnrniug fast in the new king's favor. The 
expectation of succor from France had done much to keep alive 
the Welsh insurrection. In 1406 a French force finally 
wfistrmng landed at Milford Haven; but the poverty of the 
Welsh, the meagerness of their wild mountain fare, 
filled the Frenchmen with disgust, and they speedily returned 
home again, leaving their humble allies to take care of themselves. 
The Welshmen saw the hopelessness of further struggle and 
laid down their arms. Glendower, however, fared better at the 
hands of his countrymen than Wallace; for they refused to betray 
him, and he was left to die a free man. 

About the same time fortune placed the key to the Scottish 
situation also in the king's hands. In 1390 Robert III. had come 
to the Scottish throne. He was a weak. man; and had 
James left liis despotic brother, the duke of Albany, to con- 

duct the administration as it suited him. But Albany 
had gone so far in his tyrannies as to seize Robert's eldest son and 
throw him into Rothesay Castle, where he had starved him to 
death. The poor king was in despair; in his terror he sought to 
save his second son James, then a lad of twelve years, by sending 
him to France ostensibly for his education. But the ship was 
taken by some English seamen off Flamborough Head and the 
young prince was turned over to King Henry. Henry was 
delighted to hold so good a pledge for the future conduct of the 
Scots, and, naively remarking that he thought he could educate the 
boy as well as his cousin of France, for he knew the French tongue 
quite as well as he, retained the lad in a sort of honorable captivity 
at Windsor. The love of this excellent young prince and Lady Jane 
Beaufort, whom he afterward married and took back with him to 
share the honors and perils of his Scottish throne, forms one of the 
finest chapters in the domestic history of the English court. ^ 

There had been various rumors of a renewal of the French war 
and Henry at one time no doubt regarded it as imminent. 

^ On the tragic death of James see Rossetti's fine ballad, The King's 
Tragedy. 



1405-1411] LAST DAYS OF HENRY IV. 437 

But the growing imbecility of Charles VI. had left France a prey 

to the rivalries of the two branches of the royal family, headed 

the one by Louis Duke of Orleans, the king's brother, 

Henry's ' o ' 

French and the other by John Duke of Burgundy, his cousin. 

As the quarrel developed and the nation was again 
plunged into civil war, it became more and more evident that the 
war with England would not be renewed unless the English assumed 
the offensive. But for this Henry had no mind; he proposed 
rather to watch the turn of events and support the weaker party. 
At- first he favored the Burgundians and even sent a force to 
support them in 1411 ; but when the murder of Duke Louis of 
Orleans and the further successes of the Burgundians, threatened 
to overwhelm the x\rmagnacs, as the rival party were called,^ Henry 
threw all his support on their side. It was a thoroughly selfish 
policy, but Justified perhaps from a statesman's point of view. 

Constant anxiety had very early begun to tell upon the strength 
of the king, and after 1405, he threw the burden of the administra- 
tion more and more upon his eldest son, the gay and bril- 
of^HmriT^' liant "Prince Hal." Next to the Prince of Wales, the 
most influential man in the kingdom was Thomas 
Arundel, the archbishop, who became chancellor in 1407. In the 
anomalous relation of Prince Henry to the government, who as 
president of the council was virtually regent during his father's ill- 
ness, it was inevitable that differences of opinion should arise, and 
in 1411 father and son came to an open rupture. In these jars 
Archbishop Thomas stood staunchly by the king; his opponent 
was Henry Beaufort, the king's half-brother, who on the death 
of William of Wykeham in 1404 had been raised to the see of 
AYiuchester. Beaufort was the close friend of Prince Henry. In 
1409 the archbishop issued a series of constitutions which for- 
bade not only the translation of the Scriptures without the approval 
of the bishop of the diocese, but all disputes as well upon the doc- 
trines which the church regarded as established. The constitu- 
tions were aimed at Lollardry ; but they brought Thomas into a 
quarrel with Oxford University, whose faculty objected to the 

^ Named from Count Bernard of Armagnac, the leader of the Orlean- 
ist party. , 



438 LAKCASTER AKD THE CONSTITUTION [hexry IV, 

restrictions which the archbishop proposed to put upon the intel- 
lectual life of the institution. In the quarrel the university, which 
was not without powerful friends, won, and the archbishop was 
forced to yield his place in the council to Thomas Beaufort, the 
youngest of Catharine Swynford's children. For three years 
Thomas Beaufort held the chancellorship. But in 1412 the king 
reasserted himself; the prince and his ministers were dismissed 
and Arandel came back to power. The presidency of the council 
was committed to the king's second son, Thomas Duke of 
Clarence. 

The next year Henry IV. died. The real interest of his reign 

centers in the fact that with him, for the first time, England had 

7)/( ^ sovereign who accepted the English constitution as an 

portanccof established fact and honestly tried to conduct the 

reign, of •' 

Henry iv. administration within the guarantees which the quarrels 
of tlie thirteenth and fourteenth centuries had transmitted to 
the fifteenth. His difficulties were real and serious. His income, 
about £100,000 all told, was entirely inadequate to the numerous 
needs of the government. The first year of his reign, his minis- 
ters could show a balance of £243; but with the outbreak of new 
wars, and the constant demand made upon the treasury in order to 
support numerous garrisons in Wales, in Ireland, and in Gnienne, 
it was no longer possible to return a favorable balance ; and year 
after year the ministers were compelled to remind parliament of 
the empty treasury and the ever increasing burden of debt. The 
wars, moreover, which the ministers were called upon to face, were 
not of the popular kind, and parliament never responded with that 
enthusiastic alacrity with which it had come to the help of Edward 
I. in 1295, or had plunged into the French war in 1337. It 
doled out money by driblets, insisting always upon granting sup- 
plies for specific objects; annoyed the ministers by inquisitive 
auditing committees; and that it might be sure that its 
eternal grievances received the proper attention, it waited until 
the last moment before it proceeded to grant supplies at all. 
Yet Henry bravely faced the conditions under which he had 
accepted the crown; took his stand squarely upon the laws, and 
steadily refrained fr^m using illegal methods in raising money, or in 



1404-1410] HENRY IV. AND PARLIAMENT 439 

securing the ends of administration. When his Welsh campaign 
of 1400 failed, simply because parliament would not grant funds 
sufficient to keep an army in the field, he retired, baffled and 
beaten, to lay the responsibility where it belonged. It was bitter 
for the high spirited king; but it was wise. Only so could he 
teach jDarliament that its responsibilities were equal to its 
rights, and that if it would insist upon the one, it must shoulder 
the other. It was also a part of Henry's policy to accept the prin- 
ciple, so distasteful to men of the imperious type of his predeces- 
sors, that his ministers must possess the confidence of parliament. 
In 1404 at the request of the Commons he named twenty-two 
members of parliament as his continual council; and then, when 
two years later the Commons declared that they had lost confidence 
in certain members of the committee, the king called for the resig- 
nation of the obnoxious ministers. In other ways also Henry fully 
recognized the new principles which the revolutions of the 14th 
century had introduced into the constitution. He allowed parlia- 
ment to regulate the expenses of his household. In 1407 he 
accepted the principle that money grants should originate in the 
lower house, in order that the representatives of the smaller prop- 
erty holders might fix the maximum. The right of conference of 
the two houses was also recognized, and the principle further con- 
ceded that neither house should report to the king until they liad 
come to an agreement, and then only through the speaker of the 
House of Commons, Thus principles which had been sometimes 
recognized in formal law, and again as formally denied, came at 
last to secure the sanction of established precedent. 

The same spirit which directed Henry in his dealings with 

parliament, directed him also in his relations to tlie church. The 

leaders of the church felt the insecurity of the existing 

Henni IV. jo 

and the ' establishment before the combined onslauojht of the Lol-" 
ChuTch. 

lards and those thrifty Commoners who could not under- 
stand why the people should be so heavily taxed, when so much 
property, unproductive from the point of view of the state, la}^ in 
the hands of the church. In 1410, it was proposed to confiscate 
all the property of the bishops and the religious corporations, and 
apply the money in part to the endowment of new earls, knights, 



440 LANCASTER AND -THE CONSTITUTION [iU-xky IV. 

and squires, and in part to piecing out the yearly revenues of the 
crown. The plan failed, not because of any feeling of tenderness 
toward the church, but because the Commons hesitated to increase 
the number of the baronage. The bishops, therefore, needed a 
friend, and they found one in the orthodox and law-abiding 
Henry, who not only protected them against the schemes of tlie 
Commons, but also took steps for the extirpation of the dangerous 
heresies which the clergy might well regard as responsible for the 
statute, dc l^ostile attitude of the people. In 1401, Archbishop 
Comburendo Aruudcl sccured the passage of the famous Statute de 
^^^- Haeretico Comhurendo^ by which the bishop was given 

"authority to arrest, imprison, and try within three months" a per- 
son accused of heresy, "and to call in the sheriff to burn him." 
So fully was Henry in sympathy with this measure, that he did 
not wait for the act to become law, but on February 26 had al- 
ready sent orders to the mayor and sheriffs of London directing 
them to burn alive William Sautre, on that day convicted of heresy 
by the Convocation of Canterbury.^ The burning of Sautre was 
the beginning of that sad series of executions, which were to be- 
come so common during the religious controversies of the next 
century, and which are to be ascribed not to Christianity but to 
the savagery of the age. 

The new king had long been the favorite of the people. He 
was tall, handsome, active, and delighted in feats of agility and 

strength. He was so swift of foot that men told how 
1413-1422." he could run down and capture a deer without dog or 

weapon. He loved music; he was quick and sprightly 
in conversation. He loved his frolic and was the hero of many a 
wild escapade in which some late returning burgher or the night 
watch was the victim. His pranks had caused his father many 
anxious moments, and some of the wise shook their heads in 
solemn apprehension of what might happen when this scapegrace 
of eighteen should become king; but the burdens of state, to which 
the young man had been called before his father's death, had appar- 

^For the act and. the royal writ for burning Sautre, see Gee and 
Hardy, pp. 133 and 138. For the irregularity of Henry's commission see 
Stubbs, C. H., HI, 375. 



1414] POLICY OF HENRY V. 441 

ently sobered him; Archbishop Thomas himself could not display 
more becoming dignity under the cares of office than he. 

Henry V. adopted heartily the wise policy of magnanimous con- 
ciliation which had contributed so markedly to the success of his 
father's reigu. He even ignored the recent quarrels 
Pniieyof which had divided the council board during his own 

Henry V. '^ 

presidency, and invited Arundel as well as the Beau- 
forts into his council. He honored the memory of Richard by 
bringing his supposed body from Laugley to Westminster and giv- 
ing it burial among the kings of England; he restored the sons of 
Hotspur and Huntingdon to their estates, and made the earl of 
March his personal friend. He also continued his father's vigorous 
support of Archbishop Arundel in the suppression of heresy, tak- 
ing an active interest in the arrest and final execution of fine old 
John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, whose influence as a member of the 
House of Lords and whose widely extended popularity had all but 
raised Lolla,rdism to the dignity of a political party. 

The new king, also, continued to humor parliament. He 
allowed the Commons to complete the valuable group of privileges 

which they had already secured, by granting the right 
and the of final engrossment. Heretofore the text of the laws 

had been left to the royal council to frame, and parlia- 
ment had often found itself defeated after it had secured the con- 
sent of the king, by some cunning framing of clauses by the king's 
ministers. This trick of the council had been the frequent sub- 
ject of complaint and various remedies had been sought, but under 
kings like Edward III. or Richard IL, every expedient had proved 
futile. In 1414, however, the Commons successfully petitioned 
"that there never be no law made and engrossed as statute law, 
neither by addition or by diminution, by no manner of term or 
terms, the which should change the meaning and the intent 
asked." 

The granting of this petition marks a very important develop- 
ment in the functions of parliament. In the thirteenth century its 
powers were somewhat similar to those of the States-General of 
France, and w^ere it not for its continuous history in witen- 
agemot and magnum concilium, we might call it at that time 



442 LANCASTER AND THE CONSTITUTION [henry V. 

simply a States-General. Its legislative function was exercised 

largely in makiag money grants and in "humbly petitioning" the 

r . crown to redress grievances: that is, to make a law which 

Importance = ' ' 

oftiiecon- should cover the case in hand. The petitioners merely 

cession of ... 

1414. suggested the legislation; the king made the law. 

But now after 1414, although the form of a "humble petition" was 
still retained, these petitions in fact became real legislative enact- 
ments and tlie king retained only the right of veto. 

The establishment of this important principle, embodying the 
true relation of the executive and the legislative branches of the 
government in legislation, may be regarded as comjoleting the 
formative period of the English Constitution. Under the Norman 
and Angevin kings the national judicial system had been slowly 
elaborated and the principle established that all classes, the noble 
and at last even the king, were subject to the laws of the land. In 
the thirteenth century the privilege of representation in the national 
council had been extended to tlie commons, but it was not until 
1322, in the council of York, that their representatives were recog- 
nized as a constituent part of that body, and their cooperation 
necessary in legislation; a few years later their dignity and influ- 
ence were still further enhanced by the accession of the knights of 
the shire. In the meantime the voluntary withdrawal of the 
church as a separate estate from the national council had left 
parliament to consist of two houses rather than three; while the 
efforts of parliament to secure the obedience of the crown to the 
laws, still further developed and defined its powers, until from a 
simple gathering of estates it had become a national parliament. 

In this struggle parliament had first forced from the king a 

full concession of the right of taxation; a most important right 

because by the simple expedient of refusing supplies, it 

Guarantccii. was possible for parliament to exact any other conces- 

The "riqht 

of the purse." sious whicli might be needed to complete the guarantees 
of the constitution. The next step after securing the 
"right of the purse," was to secure the right of controlling the 
king in the administration of the laws made by parliament. In the 
thirteenth century the best that the barons could devise was to cre- 
ate a committee of virtual regency, who were to overrule the king 



\y THE PRINCIPLE OF CABINET GOVERNMENT 443 

and set him aside if necessary, as in the case of John Lackland, or 
to rule in his name, as in the case of Henry III. Even in the early 

fourteenth century Earl Thomas and the Lords 
prtncinie^ at^ Ordainers apparently had nothing better to offer. The 
mvernment struggle had gradually shifted, however, from an attempt 

to control tlie king, to an attempt to control the king's 
ministers. The denial of this right of control was one chief cause 
of the troubles of Edward IL By the close of Edward III.'s reign 
the relations of king and parliament in the making of the royal 
conncil had been somewhat definitely worked out, and upon lines 
which subsequent experience has fully justified. The king might 
appoint, but the Lords must confirm, while the right of imjDeach- 
ment lay with the Commons. Edward, however, had never heartily 
accepted these principles, and Richard, though for a time appalled 
by the rough justice of the Lords Appellant, had finally denied them 
altogether and attempted to establish the complete autocracy of 
the crown. But Henry lA^. admitted fully the responsibility of his 
ministers to parliament, and even went so far as to allow parlia- 
ment to name them. It needed, therefore, only the full recogni- 
tion of the legislative function of parliament by Henry to complete 
the work which had been begun at Runnymede. 

Thus by the close of the thirteenth century, the fundamental 
principle of the English constitution had been established in the 
formal recognition of the supremacy of the laws. By the close of 
the fourteenth century the forms of the governing bodies had been 
determined. In the fifteenth century the functions and powers of 
these bodies were definitely fixed and limited, sometimes by 
statute, sometimes by precedent. All subsequent constitutional 
progress has been simj^ly in the direction of clearer statement or 
reaffirmation. New apjDlications have been found in the ever 
widening sphere of English life, but no new element has been 
added. The fifteenth century saw the English constitution com- 
plete in all its parts. 

English domestic troubles apparently were now at last settled. 
All parties had accepted the present order as final, and under its 
popular young king, the nation, united and prosperous, once 
more turned its face to the future. The truce which Richard 



444 LANCASTER AXD THE CONSTITUTION [ Henry V. 

had made with France, had not yet expired, and there was no 

particular reason for renewing the war; but unfortunately for 

both countries, the English king had the failing fre-' 

Rsixcivcf'T of 

the French Quentlv uoticcd in men of brilliant mind, who are prone 
War 1415. . . 

to become victims of their own imagination, of chasing 

visions which are not worth the catching. Henry believed sincerely 
in his right to the French crown. Ambitious, bold to a fault, with a 
distinct taste for military enterprise, with a young nobility grow- 
ing up about him, restless and warlike, with England again united, 
strong and hopeful as in the early days of Edward III., with 
France ruled by an imbecile king, and shattered by the quarrels of 
her nobles, Henry V. was the man to court temptation rather than 
put it from him. He was, therefore, hardly seated on his throne 
before he sent a demand to the king of France for the restoration 
of Normandy, Anjou, Maine, and the parts of Gascony which the 
French still held. This was followed in April by a second demand 
in which he revived the English claim upon the French crown. 
Evidently from the first Henry meant to pick a quarrel with his 
sore beset neighbors, and had no idea that his preposterous demands 
wonld be granted ; for without waiting for an answer he began to 
prepare for war, calling upon his parliament for aid, and at the 
same time entering into communication with the duke of Bur- 
gundy. Parliament responded generously and heartily. Its 
enthusiasm reminds us of the year 1337. It voted a tax of two 
tenths and two fifteenths and made over to the king the "alien 
priories," that is the lands held in England by foreign monas- 
teries. Witli these funds Henry began to collect a mercenary 
army. The ordinary pay of a day laborer in England was 4d. ; but 
Henry offered to his rank and file, the archers, 6d. ; to a knight 2s. 
a day, but to a knight who brought other knights in his train, 
that is an ordinary baron, 4s. ; to an earl Os. 8d., and to a duke 13s. 
4d. In addition to this scale, munificent for the time, he further 
promised that two-thirds of all booty should be divided among the 
common soldiery. The bounty offered, the jDopularity of Henry, the 
general conviction of the weakness of France and the assurance of suc- 
cess, brought to his ranks "the very pride of the country." A finer 
body of soldiers have rarely departed from the shores of England. 



^ "N" G li A ]Nj| D 




A-- Sout?ia7npton Qjiwi ic 




CAMPAIGNS 
HTJKDBED YEARS WAR 

Edward III to Crecy , 1346 
to Paris, I3ii 
Black Prince up tlie Qaronne, 1355 
" to Poitiers, 1356 

into Spain , 13S7 
Duks of Lancaster 1373 
Henry "V to Agincourt 1415 
Joan of Arc , 1429-30 



1415] THE CAMPAIGN OF AGINCOUKT 445 

The troops were already gathering at Northampton, when 
rumor was brought to Henry of a conspiracy to carry off the earl 
of March to Wales and there proclaim him king. The 
P'^&f plot was to be sprung after Henry had left England, 
while he was involved in the toils of a distant campaign 
in the interior of France. The chief plotter was Eichard Earl of 
Cambridge, who had married Anne Mortimer and represented his 
wife's interests as heir to the throne next after the earl of March. 
Cambridge and his fellow conspirators were arrested and, npon 
confession of their guilt, executed. The affair made no difference 
in the friendship of Henry for the earl of March, who apparently 
was not a party to the plot and had been the first to warn the 
king, nor for Edward the new duke of York, the elder brother of 
Cambridge. The affair, as it turned out, was of little importance 
of itself, yet it served to keep Henry in mind of tlie shadows 
which ever larked about the Lancastrian throne. 

On the 10th of August Henry began the crossing of the Chan- 
nel, and landing at Chef de Caux advanced to the siege of Harfleur 
„, on the 17th. Unlike Edward III., he knew how to 

The cam- ' 

jL^court '^^ke the most of an advantage. Instead of wasting 
^^•'^- time in burning hayricks and slaughtering cattle, he 

fixed upon certain strategic points and bent all his energies upon 
securing these as a new basis of attack upon the enemy. The fall 
of Harfleur, after a heroic defense of more than thirty days, at 
once gave him control of the valley of the lower Seine. His army, 
however, had been so wasted that he dared not attack Paris ; he 
therefore retired toward Calais with the idea of joining forces with 
the duke of Burgundy. His experience was much that of Edward 
in 1346; the bridges were broken down before him; the country 
was hostile, the inhabitants removing everything that his army 
might subsist on. Weary and famished, the English approached 
the Somme at Edward III. 's old ford of Blanche-Tache, only to be 
compelled to retrace its banks as far as Amiens before they could 
secure a crossing. At last they neared Calais to find near the 
castle of Agincourt the French blocking their way in overwhelm- 
ing numbers. 

The English now had hardly 6,000 available men. Yet they 



446 



LANCASTER AND THE CONSTITUTION 



THBiNaT V. 



The hattle, 
Oct. 25, 1415 



were buoyed up by the memory of former victories and by the mar- 
velous spirit of their leader. "I would not have a single man 
more," he cried; "if God give us victory it will be plain 
that Ave owe it to his grace; if not, the fewer we are, 
the less loss for England." The French, outnum- 
bering the English six to one and therefore overconfident, allowed 
Henry to select his ground, a narrow plowed field fianked by 
hedges and thickets. The archers were placed in front, each man 
protected from the rush of cavalry by a six-foot stake sharpened at 

the ends and 
so set in the 
ground as to 
receive upon 
its slant- 
ing point 
the breast 
of a charging 
horse. The 
field was sod- 
den with re- 
cent rains and 
so soft that the 
men-at-arms 
sank to the 
ankle in the 
moist earth. 
It was almost 
impassable for horse. The French accordingly refused to advance, 
and drawing up their men-at-arms, the most of them on foot as at 
Poitiers, stood so wedged together that the knights could with 
difficulty use their swords. Two bodies of horse were marshalled 
on the wings of the first rank, designed to charge the English 
archers. 

Henry waited in his position for hours ; but the French refused 
to move. The English were without food and fight they must or 
surrender. When it became evident that the French were not to 
be lured into making the attack, Henry ordered forward his bow- 




1415-1419] RESULTS OF AGINCOUET 447 

men, who advanced lightly over the soft ground until they came 
within range of the enemy, and then with a hearty English cheer, 
sent their arrow-flight into the dense ranks before them. The 
French horsemen attempted to sweep down upon the flanks, but 
only to flounder and wallow in the soft earth, while the English 
men-at-arms advanced and closed in upon the first line. For a few 
minutes the press was terrible, when a well timed attack of 
the English horse on the flanks threw the French into confusion. 
The second line was broken in the same way and then the English 
advanced to attack the third. It was at this moment that Henry 
gave his order for the massacre of the prisoners. The deed, so 
out of keeping with all that we know of Henry's character, can be 
explained only by the supposition that he thought at the moment 
that the enemy were about to attack him from the rear, and he 
feared that the prisoners of whom the English had taken a great 
many might also turn upon him. Then he attacked the third line 
and the battle was won. 

The immediate effect of Agincourt was to turn upon Henry the 
eyes of Europe as its most brilliant captain, its most glorious 
Results of king. England went wild with enthusiasm ; his return 
Agincourt. -^^^s a triumph. No one thought of the flaw in his title 
to the English throne, or the double flaw in his title to the French 
throne. The Emperor Sigismund, fresh from the triumph of the 
Council of Constance, where the great schism of the church had 
finally been closed, came to visit him, in order that here too he 
might play out his little farce of peacemaking. But with the eyes 
of England dazzled by the glories of Agincourt, and parliament 
lavishly voting supplies to Henry for life, peace even after the order 
of Sigismund was not to be thought of; and the emperor departed 
as he came, having first been allowed to salve his pride by entering 
into an alliance with the conqueror of France. 

Henry in the meanwhile was preparing to take full advantage 
of his victory. He raised the royal navy once more to its old 
The cam- efficiency, and while the Burgundians and Armagnacs 
Wormmidy ^^^^'^ fighting before Paris, began a campaign for the 
1417-1419. conquest of Normandy. His treatment of the con- 
quered country was firm but conciliatory. He came, he announced, 



448 LANCASTER AND THE CONSTITUTION [henhy V. 

to give peace to the land and save the people from the curse of 
civil strife. He forbade bis men to pillage, or to abuse the 
peasantry. As city after city fell into his hands, it was a part of his 
regular program to establish in each place an orderly govern- 
ment, and to assure the burghers of his purpose to give them a 
better protection than the French. 

The steady advance of the English finally brought the French 
]iobles to their senses and led to an attempt to bring the duke of 

Burgundy and the court party together. A meeting 
The assassina- n j i ^ r> r> 

tionof Duiie was arranged to take place upon the bridge at Montereau 

gundy, Aug., between Duke John and the Dauphin Charles who now 

141.'). , . 

represented the stricken king. But the hatred of the 
Armagnac for tlie Burgundian was deep seated; the blood of the 
duke of Orleans was still unavenged, and as the traitorous Burgun- 
dian knelt before the Dauphin in the act of renewing his oath of 
homage, an old servant of the duke of Orleans rushed upon him 
and smote him to death. The breach between Burgundy and 
Armagnac was now irreparable; the duke's son Philip, with all 
his following, including the great city of Paris where Duke John 
was very popular, again went over to the English, and the 
Armagnac court were compelled to accept such peace as Henry was 
willing to give them. 

The peace was concluded at Troyes, May 21, 1430. By it the 
Dauphin was excluded from the succession. Charles VI. was to 

remain kiuff in name until his death ; Henry was to 

Treaty of . . . 

Troijes^May marry liis daughter Catharine, be recognized as "heir 

21, 1420. , . 

of France," and govern tbe kingdom as regent. 
Henry now returned to England to crown his new queen at 
AVestminster and enjoy his triumph in the midst of his people. 
He had succeeded where Edward III. had failed. The crown of 
France was won; his son after him should wear the crown of both 
nations. But Henry was about to commit the same blunder which 
Edward I. had made in dealing with the Scots; he forgot the 
people. If the French crown was won, France was not. The 
Dauphin Charles, who was by no means inclined to sub- 
mit to the disinheritance prescribed by the Treaty of Troyes, had 
retired south of the Loire, whither in time flocked all the discon- 



1421, 1422] DEATH OF HENRY V. 449 

tented elements of the nation. The Dauphin, frivolous, dissipated, 
and unworthy of the people's trust, was a poor leader for such a 
forlorn hope; yet the people clung to him as their last refuge. lie 
was thus strong in the very desperateness of his cause, nor were 
Henry's lieutenants a match for the seasoned warriors whom the 
Prince now pitted against them. His brother Thomas 
March 22, Duke of Clarence was defeated and slain at Bauge and 

1431 

Henry himself was forced to hasten from Westminster to 
enter the field again in defense of his new crown. He drove the 
Dauphin south of the Loire and then turned upon Meaux. Here he 
was compelled to sit down and wait seven months, while dysentery. 
Birth of ^^^ scourge of the armies of the fifteenth century, 
Smfel/iy carried ofE his men. The only ray to brighten the tedi- 
^^^^- ons waiting of that long and fatal winter, was the news 

of the birth of a son, who was straightway christened Henry. On 
the 10th of May 1422, Meaux surrendered; but Henry had little 
opportunity to rest and was at once called north again by the 
renewed activity of the Dauphin. On the way he was overtaken 
by the fell disease which had already laid low so many of his 
people. He died at Vincennes near Paris August 31, 1422. 



CHAPTER VII 



THE LAST STAGE OF THE HUN'DRED YEARS' WAR. 
RIVALRY OF LANCASTER AND YORK 



THE 



HENRY VI., 1422-1461 



THE DESCENT OF THE RIVAL HOUSE OF YORK 



Lionel, Duke of Clarence, ad son of Edward III., 
I cl. 1368 

Pliilippa= Edmund Mortimer. Earl of March, 
great-fjrandson of Roger Mortimer of Edward 
II. 's reign 



Roger, Earl of 
March, killed 
in Ireland 

1*18 



I I 

Edmund taken Elizabeth m. 
l)y (ilendower Henry Percy, 
at ISiyiiiilas, "Hotspur" 
III. (Ut'udower's 
daughter 



Edmund, Earl of March, 
1398-1424 



Edwai^d IV., 
1461-1483 



Edmund, Earl of 
Rutland slain 
at Wakefield 
1460 



Edmund, Duke of York, 5th 

son of Edward III., 

d. 1401 



Edward, Earl of 
Rutland, Duke 
of York, killed 
at Agincourt 

1415 



Anne = Richard, Earl of Cam- 
I bridge executed 1415 

Richard, Duke of = Cicely Neville 
York, killed at 
Wakelield 1460 



(Jeorge. Duke of 
(Uarence, mur- 
dered in prison 

1478 



Richard III., 

1483-1485 



Edward V., d.l483 



I 
Richard, Duke of York (7. 1483 



Elizabeth = Henry VII. 



• The death of Henry V. left his two realms to a child eight 
months old. His brother John, Dnke of Bedford, a man of ster- 
ling worth and ability of high order, was appointed 
Henry VI., regent of France and protector of England. When the 

1422. J. o 

duties of the regency carried Bedford to France, a 
second brother Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, was to have the 
title and assume the duties of protector. The arrangement was 
unfortunate. Duke Humphrey was a very different man from John 
of Bedford; he had a certain kind of showy ability; but he was 
also insanely ambitious, restless and reckless; the kind of man to 

450 



1422-1428] PROTECTORATE OE BEDFORD 451 

make trouble unless held in by a strong hand. Henry Beaufort 
Bishop of Winchester, the great-uncle of the little king, was 
appointed to the chancellorship, where his personal worth and repu- 
tation for sound judgment did much to outweigh the mischievous 
influence of Duke Humphrey. 

Two months after the death of Henry V., poor Charles VI., 

forlorn and unattended, passed away at his palace of St. Paul in 

Paris. His death, however, changed in little the out- 

Accession of , , , , , -r^ , . , t . , , ,1 

ciiaries VII., look for the Dauphin, who possessed neither the men 

1422. 

nor the resources to enable him to compete successfully 
with the English regent. Yet he assumed the title of Charles VII. 
and kept up a court as gaily as he could at Bourges. 

The first step of Bedford in strengthening the English hold 
upon the French crown was to form an active alliance with his two 

great vassals of Burgundy and Brittany, based upon a 
oxratums ^ouble marriage. He thus held control of almost 
agaimt ^]jq entire seacoast of Prance, and also secured a 

Charles VII. ' 

fine base for operations in the regions east and west of 
Paris. He then began a series of campaigns designed to wrest 
from Charles his last hold north of the Loire. In 1423 his able 
lieutenant, Thomas Montague, Earl of Salisbury, won a decisive 
victory at Crevant, and the next year at Verneuil Bedford himself 
almost eclipsed the victory of his late brother at Agincourt. In 
two years nearly all the strongholds of Charles north of the Loire 
were taken. Bedford also still further weakened Charles by 
persuading the council to release James Stuart and enter into a 
league with him, in order to withdraw the Scots from the French 
alliance. The prince had been held in England for eighteen years. 
During the four years which followed the victory of Verneuil, 
the thoughtless ambition of Duke Humphrey did much to 
„ ,. neutralize the results of Bedford's successes. He scan- 

lleactwn, 

1424-1428. dalized good people, and offended the duke of Burgundy, 
by marrying Jacqueline of Hainault, the wife of the duke of 
Brabant, whose divorce was still in question and whose dominions 
were expected to fall to Duke Philip. At home, also, Humphrey 
quarreled with his fellow councillors, and the duke of Bedford had 
to cross the Channel in order to quiet the storm. The French 



452 RIVALRY OF LANCASTER AND YORK [henry VL 

people, who had been somewhat confused at first by the marriage 

of Henry V. and the Princess Catharine and hardly knew which 

was the real national party, were now beginning to see the path of 

duty, if not of interest, more clearly and to regard the Dauphin as 

the champion of national independence. His misfortunes, also, 

appealed to them, if his character did not. Charles, moreover, 

had the experience of the past to draw from. Like Charles V., 

he sought to replace his feudal army by a professional soldiery, and 

even found another du Guescliu inthe scarcely less famous Dunois, 

In other ways also the tide was turning against the English. Ten 

years had elapsed since the renewal of the war, and the first flush 

of enthusiasm had long since ebbed in England; it was no longer 

an easy matter to persuade parliaments to make annual grants, or 

to enlist men for endless campaigns against stone walls, where 

dysentery and camp fever were far more to be feared than French 

bombards. 

In 1428, it was determined by Bedford and his councillors to 

make one supreme effort to drive the Dauphin wholly south of the 

Loire, and to secure the great town of Orleans, the 

The siege of strategic value of which in carrying on subsequent 
Orleans, 1428. » j o i 

operations south of the river was well understood. It 

was a serious undertaking; the city was well manned and well pro- 
visioned; its position also was one of great natural strength. The 
English by the utmost endeavor could marshal an army of only 
10,000 men, and this was still further weakened by the temporary 
withdrawal of the duke of Burgundy. Yet with this force, in Octo- 
ber 1428, they proceeded to invest the city. Early in the siege 
Salisbury, the hero of Crevant, who commanded the little English 
army, was killed by a cannon shot. This was a serious loss to the 
English; yet the garrison were so completely demoralized that for 
the most part they simply looked on while the little army of Eng- 
lishmen continued to build forts and plant batteries about the city. 
In the spring the French outside of tlie city plucked up courage 
sufficient to attack a supply train, which Sir John Fastolf was con- 
voying to the English camp, but were beaten off with great 
slaughter. The supplies were mostly salt fish, hence the camp 
wits facetiously dubbed the encounter the "Battle of the Her- 



1428] JOAN OP AEG 453 

rings." This was the only serious attempt made by the French to 
interfere with the English during the first six months of the siege. 
The court was in despair; Charles gave up hope, and thought 
seriously of leaving Aquitaine altogether and seeking refuge in 
Dauphine or possibly even in Spain or Scotland. 

A great nation, like Balaam's ass, sometimes requires a vigorous 

drubbing to give it voice, and when it finds utterance at last, it 

is likely to speak in strange and startling ways. The 

The f drill of o j 

natimiai French people, not the titled nobility, had suffered long 
and sadly under the war. Generations had come and 
gone, and still the fire smouldered on. Frenchmen without num- 
ber had fallen in battle; died of wounds and mutilation; died of 
pestilence and famine. Thousands of French homes had been 
destroyed; the children scattered; wives and mothers had perished 
of hunger and exhaustion; still the dreadful war raged on. And 
no'w at last the end of all this suffering apparently was at hand ; 
and what had it all been for? Only that the foreigner might pos- 
sess the land, and that the last of the French native kings might 
die in exile. Whatever men might say of the chief actors, the 
cause was holy. Would not God himself interfere to save his 
people? 

It was this spirit of pure patriotism, very different from the 
self-seeking of noble and churchman, which found incarnation at 

last in a simple peasant girl of Domremy, Joan of Arc. 
Joan of A.TC 

She had pondered long upon the woes of her people, 

until the iron had entered her sonl. Possibly her simple mind bent 
under the strain, — in the language of a modern materialistic age 
became deranged. Bat then all unselfish enthusiasm is of the 
nature of insanity. She believed in God and his saints; she 
believed in the destiny of her country ; the simple creed of all true 
patriotism. She saw visions and heard voices. She had no choice 
but obedience. Her sacred enthusiasm inspired those about her 
with confidence, and with them she went forth to meet dangers, 
the real nature of which her rustic mind but dimly comprehended. 
On the 12th of February, 1429, Joan set out from Vaucouleurs, 
a king's town some thirteen miles from Domremy, to present her- 
self at the court of Charles VII. She was dressed and armed 



454 RIVALRY OF LAISTCASTER AND YORK [henby VI. 

like a man ; by her side rode a few friends whom she had convinced 

of the reality of her visions and who were embued with her spirit. 

From Vaucouleurs on the borders of Lorraine to Chinon 

from Bom- where Charles was then holding his court, the distance 

was two hundred and fifty miles; the country was 

infested by wandering bands of freebooters; every step was fraught 

with danger. Yet she made the journey without incident. 

At Chinon Joan met her first serious difficulty in gaining an 

audience from the king and explaining her mission. Here she 

found characters to deal with very different from the 
Joan and -^ 

Charles VII. simple peasant folk of her home. Yet the age was full 
of superstition; men lived with the spirit world ever at their 
elbows. Something about the strange maid in man's attire, her 
eyes lightened with holy enthusiasm, or possibly some crude tests 
devised by the churchmen in the royal suite, laid hold upon the 
young king's imagination. He and those about him were satisfied 
that she was sent either by God or the devil, — as men regarded 
such things then, about equally powerful and equally desirable as 
allies. 

Accordingly it was determined to give the "wondrous maid" a 
trial and put her mission to the test. At Blois she came into 
direct contact with the wild and dissolute life of a 
pearanceof medieval army. She felt the contradiction with her 
own pure nature, and began her work by purging the 
camp. She inspired the rough soldiery with her religious enthu- 
siasm and brought grizzled warriors like children to the confes- 
sional, which most of them had neglected for years. The army 
from the depths of despair rose at once to the height of enthu- 
siasm ; they believed that at last God had come to fight for them. 
The English on the other hand had their own explanation of the 
wonderful power of this new ally of the French; they saw in her a 
witch without question, an ally of the devil, and their courage 
melted accordingly. Their leaders could no longer bring them to 
face the dreadful champion of Charles. 

Joan entered Orleans without difficulty and at once began a series 
of vigorous sallies upon the forts with which the English had 
blocked the ways into the city. The besiegers, whose numbers 



1439-1431] DEATH OF JOAN OF ARC 455 

from the first had been inferior to the French, were swept from 
position after position, until on Sunday morning, the 8th of May, 
Successor 1439, they formally raised the siege and retired from 
Joan. before the city. A few days later the earl of Suffolk was 

defeated and captured at Jargeau ; then Sir John Talbot was over- 
whelmed at Patay; and at last on the 17th of July, Joan stood by 
the altar in the great Cathedral of Rheims, the ancient coronation 
city of the French kings, and saw Charles VII. crowned. 

The mission of the maid was now accomplished; but the king, 

against her Judgment, persuaded her to remain with the army. 

She won no more successes; her simple soul was no 

Dccl'Xii€ of 

Joan of Arc's matcli for the mean intrigues and jealousies of the 

influence. -i ■ -, ,r. ^ ^ i nin-r. -1- 

camp, and in 1430 she was captured by the Burgundians 
at Compiegne, betrayed it is said by her former companions in arms, 
and then sold to the English, The English, who still cherished 
their old theory, thought, no doubt, to break the spell and 
restore the morale of their troops by destroying the alleged witch 
and thus vindicating the righteousness of their own cause. Joan 
was accordingly tried before a court of Norman and Bargundian 
prelates who were determined to force from her the confession 
of witchcraft or to destroy her, or to do both. She was con- 
victed and sentenced to death by fire. The cruel command of the 
court was carried out at Rouen, May 30, 1431. The execution 
was a lasting disgrace to the English leaders and to their tools the 
French churchmen who authorized it; to King Charles and the 
French conrt who lifted not a finger to save the poor girl who 
gave her life for France. 

While English interests on the continent were passing through 
these trying vicissitudes, the council and parliament at home were 

more or less distracted by the continual quarreling of 
affairs at Gloucestcr and Henry Beaufort. In 1426 so intense 

was the feeling that their partisans almost came to 
blows; the parliament of the year is known as the "Parliament of 
Bats" because each member came armed with a bludgeon. In 
1427 Beaufort made the serious mistake of allowing the pope to 
raise him to the rank of cardinal, which, while it opened a larger 
arena for his commanding genius in the field of European politics, 



456 KIVALKY OF LANCASTER AND YOEK [henry vi. 

put a new weapon in the hands of his enemies at home by ena- 
bling them to attack him directly as a friend of the pope, sold to 
the papal interests. Gloucester insisted that he should 
Temporary give up not only his English bishopric but the chancel- 
Beaufort. lorship as well. But before the question could be set- 
tled, a service which Beaufort rendered the English 
army in the field after the relief of Orleans, satisfied the waver- 
ing, and for the moment shamed even his enemies into silence. 
Yet he was glad to escape the hornets which Gloucester kept ever 
buzzing about his ears, and after the French coronation of the 
English king in 1431 he kept away from England for two years. 

On the continent in the six years which followed the death of 

Joan of Arc neither party was able to gain on the other. Yet in 

any prolonged struggle, time is always on the side of 

Thedefection those who are fighting the defensive war. In 1433 the 

of Burgundy. ° o 

enthusiasm of parliament for the war had ebbed alto- 
gether; a debt of £160,000 had accumulated, enormous for the 
times, and, do what the ministers would, it continued to mount 
upwards at the rate of £20,000 a year. Exclusive of the troops 
detailed for garrison duty, Bedford could command barely 8,500 
men for field duty. It was evident, therefore, that if the conquest 
were to be completed, it must be by the vigorous support of the 
duke of Burgundy. But unfortunately Bedford had managed to 
offend his powerful ally by marrying the sister of the Count of St. 
Pol, Burgundy's old time enemy. Burgundy had never been 
happy in the British alliance, and nothing but the fierceness of his 
desire for revenge upon the men who had so foully slain his father 
on the bridge of Montereau, had held him to the uncongenial task 
of making war for the glorification of a foreign king. The old 
wound, however, was now somewhat closed, and, smarting under 
the new offense inflicted by Bedford's marriage, the duke entered 
into secret negotiations with Charles VII. Pope Eugenius IV. in 

the meantime had summoned a congress at xVrras in the 
of Arras, '^ hope of finding some ground upon which the peace of 

Europe might be restored. The peace congress met in 
August 1435, and the French were ready with a proposal which 
had been secretly agreed upon beforehand with Burgundy; they 



1436-1440] INCEEASIJS'G STRENGTH OE PEACE PARTY 457 

offered to cede to the English Normandy and Aquitaine on con- 
dition that the English renounce their claims to the French crown. 
The English, as was expected, promptly rejected the proposal, 
and four weeks later Burgundy renounced the English alliance and 
made a formal treaty with the French king. He car- 
Parisdeciares ried with him also the city of Paris. Her population, 

f(n- Charles, ,ii, in ,i,t-. i n ii 

April, 1436. always turbulent, and devoted to Burgundy rather than 

to the English, rose against the meager garrison which 

Bedford had left in the city and opened the gates to their king. 

For the first time in eighteen years, the French national party held 

the capital. But a still more serious misfortune had already 

befallen the English in the death of Bedford himself, who, worn 

out by the long struggle, and broken-hearted over the failure of all 

his plans, had survived the Congress of Arras barely three 

weeks. 

The peace party in England now had ample material for a 

vigorous campaign in favor of putting an end to the useless war. 

New leaders were brought forward in hope of finding a 

Growth of man who could fill Bedford's place and lead English 
peace party . , • , ixi^ i • i 

in England, armies once more to victory, but only to emphasize by 

their repeated failure the hopelessness of the struggle. 

First, Eichard Duke of York, the son of that earl of Cambridge 

who had been executed in 1415, was sent over as regent; then 

Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, and then the duke of York 

again; finally John Beaufort, the nephew of the cardinal, tried his 

fortune in conducting the losing cause. Some paltry advantages 

were secured; but the conviction was steadily gaining ground in 

England that it was impossible to build up an English monarchy 

on French soil in defiance of the wishes of the French people. 

Gloucester had done his best to embarrass the ministers in 

prosecuting the war when it was successful. He now did his best 

to stir up popular feeling against the peacemakers. The 

Attempt of candid mind of Cardinal Beaufort recognized the use- 

Ol<)uce»ter ° 

^war'nartn^ lessness of continuing the war, and he bravely put him- 
self at the head of the peace party. In this he also had 
the active support of the young king, whose gentle and kindly 
spirit had no desire to, see the aimless waste of life continue. The 



458 EIVALRT OF LANCASTER AND YORK [henry vi. 

two found an ally in the duke of Orleans, who had been taken at 

Agincourt and had passed the intervening twenty-five years as a 

prisoner of war. He was now released on condition 

144if 

that he pay a ransom of £60,000 and pledge himself 
never again to bear arms against England. He was also to use his 
influence to secure a jDermanent peace; if he succeeded, the ransom 
was to be remitted. Gloucester was furious; he raged and 
stormed, and openly accused Beaufort of treason. 

Two years later Henry VI. came of age. He was singularly 
pure in spirit, amiable, devout, and above all anxious to please. 

The hearts of the people turned to him with hope and 

Henry VI. . . . 

Character, confidence; yet they were doomed to bitter disappoint- 
ment. A more unfortunate king never reigned. With 
all his goodness, he lacked the sterling mental qualities necessary 
for a ruler of men. He had been most carefully trained, too care- 
fully perhaps; for his tutors, encouraged by his eagerness, his con- 
scientious devotion to duty, had laid tasks upon the young prince 
which his feeble strength could not sustain; possibly also there 
lurked in the lad's constitution some germs of hereditary insanity, 
the tainted blood of his French mother, which required only the 
heart-breaking cares of the next few years to develop. 

During his minority the young king with the desperate tenacity 
of one who knew his own incompetence for independent action, had 
clung to the venerable Cardinal Beaufort, and when fail- 
theiumfs ing health forced the cardinal to retire from public life, 
Henry had found a new support in William de la Pole, 
the earl of Suffolk. This de la Pole was the grandson of the old 
chancellor of Richard II; his father had fallen at Ilarfleur in 1415. 
Suffolk, with the real interests of the House of Lancaster at heart, 
urged upon the king the policy of an early marriage, and selected for 
him Margaret, the daughter of Rene Duke of Anjou, Count of Prov- 
ence, and titular King of Naples and Jerusalem. But what influ- 
enced Henry more than the father's titles, was the fact that 
the proposed bride was a niece of Charles VII. 's queen, and 
hence the marriage might prove a step towards a permanent 
peace. In 1 445 Suffolk managed to secure a truce for ten years. 
The English agreed to withdraw the few garrisons which were still 



1445 1447] THE WAR RENEWED 459 

left in Anjou and Maine, and Margaret was sent over to England. 
The peace party was now in the ascendant. Parliament voted its 
thanks. Sujffolk was made a marqnis, and four years later a duke. 
The marriage, as might be expected, was bitterly opposed by 
Duke Humphrey and the war party; first because they were 
opposed to making any concessions to France; and 

Death of ^'^ , ■ 

Gloucester, sccoud because Humphrey himself was not anxious to 
see his own hopes of securing the crown destroyed by 
the birth of an heir to Henry. But Humphrey's influence had 
been on the wane of late, owing largely to the over-eagerness of his 
wife Eleanor Cobham, whom he had married after the pope had rid 
him of the fair Jacqueline, and who had been thoughtless enough 
to consult a famous witch about the future of her house. In a day 
when men seriously believed in the black art such an act approached 
dangerously near to treason, and the good dame soon found herself 
in sore trouble. Some believed that she had actually sought to 
compass the young king's death. Gloucester, however, was still 
not without some following and kept up his opposition until even 
Henry's patience was exhausted, and at the beginning of the year 
1447, the king gave his councillors permission to arrest the trouble- 
some nobleman. Five days later Gloucester was dead. 

With the death of Gloucester, the last obstacle in the way of a 

permanent peace was removed. Cardinal Beaufort had survived 

him only six weeks; but his declining health had for 

The wnr 

renewed, some time back prevented him from exercising his old 

1447. . 

influence in politics, and his loss was hardly missed by 
the peace party. The real leader was now the new made marquis 
of Suffolk, who proceeded in good faith to carry out the agreement 
made at the time of the marriage contract. Here, however, he 
met a new obstacle in the English garrisons who felt the soldiers' 
reluctance to withdraw from a country which had once been won 
by the blood of their comrades in arms. Their commander 
Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, '^ was too much in sympathy 
with their mood to restrain them, and allowed them to vent their 
ill humor upon the helpless inhabitants of Fougeres. This act of 

^John Beaufort had killed himself in 1444, and Edmund had suc- 
ceeded to his titles and also to his command in France. 



460 TilVALRT OP LANCASTER AND YORK [ Henry VI. 

wanton savagery, by which a peaceful city of France was turned 
over to a band of armed ruffians who called themselves English 
soldiers, to be sacked as though it had been taken by the sword, 
could have but one result. The two nations were again 
plunged into war, and all the planning of Suffolk came to 
naught. 

The council were now in worse trouble than if there had been 
no attempt to secure peace. The war party were not appeased by 

the failure of Suffolk's plans; the peace party were 
verses, inclined to hold him responsible, all parties were 

angry because he had surrendered the citadels of Anjou. 
The French were well prepared for a renewal of the struggle; they 
had entirely reorganized their military system, and were able to 
take the field with a standing army of paid soldiers. The English 
were correspondingly unprepared. Somerset could not hold his 
ground with the meager garrisons under his command, and Suffolk 
could not strengthen him. One by one his citadels were wrested 
from him. In 1448 Le Mans fell, and in 1449 the great citadel 
of Eouen also passed into French hands. The recovery of Nor- 
mandy by the French was now assured. 

In England all control was rapidly slipping from the feeble 
hands of the council, whose misfortunes had long since lost them 

the confidence of the people. The government was 
anarchy in virtually bankrupt,^ and without funds it could neither 

reward its servants nor awe its foes. Confusion reigned 
everywhere. The barons despised the threats of the council, 
defied the courts, and, with the feeling that troublous times were 
at hand, began hiring and arming retainers^ and forming military 

1 The debt had reached the unprecedented sum of £370,000. 

2 The custom of keeping hired bands of liveried retainers, known as 
livery of coynpany, had been introduced soon after Edward I. by the statute 
Quia Emptores had put a stop to subinfeudation. The support of such 
a band was always a temptation to a baron to engage in acts of unlaw- 
ful violence or to interfere with the courts of justice by "upholding or 
maintaining qnavrels not his own." Edward I. had forbidden mainte- 
nance and Richard II. and Henry IV. had attempted to check livery of com- 
pany ; but the barons apparently had paid little attention to the laws, 
and ill the era of anai'chy now at hand the evil soon assumed alarming 



1450] THE CADE REBELLION 461 

leagues with neighboring freeholders and knights ; nor was it long 
before swords were drawn and blood was flowing. The north was 
in an nproar where the two rival branches of the Nevilles were 
already fighting; experiences such as those of John Paston, 
whose home at Gresliam was stormed by Lord Moleyns at the head 
of a thousand men, soon became the order of the day. Here was 
soil prepared for fresh trouble; it needed only a leader to plunge 
the nation into all the horrors of prolonged civil war. 

At last the year 1450 opened; destined to be a year of national 
humiliation, disorder, and much shedding of blood. In January 

the council sent Bishop Moleyns down to Portsmouth 
fatal year, to quiet some mutinous sailors by offering them partial 

payment on account of money due them from the gov- 
ernment. They turned upon Moleyns and murdered him. Two 
weeks later parliament met and opened the second tragedy of the 
year with a direct attack upon Suffolk. Since the fall of Rouen in 
the preceding October, the populace had turned all its wrath upon 
the now doomed minister. He had been made the target of a 
fusillade of popular ballads, noteworthy as affording the first use of 
the word "Jackanapes." Henry attempted to save his old friend 
and servant by sending him out of the kingdom for five years. 
Suffolk left London with a howling mob at his heels, and reaching 
the seaboard in safety set sail April 30, only to be overhauled, 
dragged out into a small boat, and murdered under circumstances 
of peculiar barbarity; the headless trunk was cast out upon the 
sands of Dover. 

The government of Henry VI., now without a helmsman, 
was left to drift aimlessly under the shadow of the next great crisis 

of the year, — the Cade Rebellion. Kent and Sussex had 
Rebdiion ^^^'^ ^^® most stirred by the loss of the French posses- 
Juki'^1450 sions; the population were given either to maritime 

pursuits or manufacturing and had profited directly by 
the war. Their enmity, therefore, had be.en specially bitter 
against Suffolk and when a rumor reached them that they were 
to be held responsible for the murder, it was enough to set fire to 

propoi'tions. The existence of these small private standing armies made 
such a struggle as the Wars of the Roses possible. 



462 RIVALRY OP LANCASTER AND YORK [henry Vi. 

the combustibles with which this part of the country particularly 
abounded. Once started, the movement gathered strength rapidly 
and soon all southern England was ablaze. Unlike the Peasant 
Eevolt, this was an uprising of the middle classes. The lesser 
gentry and the free yeomanry turned out with the unanimity and 
order of an ordinary military muster. At Sevenoaks they were 
set upon by a body of the king's men, but made so good a defense 
that they beat off the troops, slaying their captain, Sir Humphrey 
Stafford. A leader now for the first time appears, one Jack Cade, 
who called himself John Mortimer, professing to be a son of the 
late earl of March and to be acting in the interests of his alleged 
cousin, Richard the duke of York. 

Henry had already found that he could not depend upon the 
mutinous troops, and after allowing his treasurer Lord Saye, a sup- 
porter of Suffolk, to be cast into prison, abandoned his 
tiw rebels^ Capital and fled to Coventry, Cade at once advanced 
upon London, proclaiming as the grievances which had 
called the people to arms the loss of France, the heavy taxation, 
the extortion of the king's officers, the corruption of the courts, 
the exclusion of the king's kinsmen from the council, and the inter- 
ference of the ministers with the election of the knights of the 
shire. On the 30th of July the rebels were allowed by the citi- 
zens to enter the city. At first their conduct was orderly and 
businesslike. The hated treasurer. Lord Saye, and Crowmer, the 
sheriff of Kent, whose exactions in his county had been a chief 
occasion of local irritation, were drawn out of prison and put to 
death. At night the insurgents returned to Southwark. But on 
the 5th, their cupidity got the better of their judgment, and they 
began plundering the homes of the burghers. The Londoners, 
who up to this point had shown oidygood will, were roused against 
the rioters and after a severe battle on the night following finally 
got possession of the bridge, opened the draw, and closed the 
gates. The rioters were now thoroughly discouraged; the more 
shrewd began to slink home, those who could, gettijig pardons. 
Cade, however, kept a small band about him and retired into 
Kent, where he was soon after overtaken and slain by the new 
sheriff. Outbreaks had also occurred in other eastern counties, 



1450] 1/ RETURN^ OF YORK 463 

as well as in the west in Wiltshire and Gloucestershire. But with 
the death of Cade and the collapse of the Kentish rising, the other 
disturbances also soon subsided. 

The duke of York, the representative of the Mortimer claims 
to the crown, had been in the meanwhile quietly biding his time 
in Ireland, whither Suffolk had sent him to get him out 
rorf""'^"^ of the way. It does not appear that he had been impli- 
cated in any of the recent risings. He was altogether 
too shrewd a politician to trust his cause to such agents as Cade 
and the undisciplined mob who followed him. Yet any movement 
which helped to impress upon the people the complete failure of 
the present administration, advanced by so much the day when he 
should be called upon to interfere and save the state. Reverses 
also were crowding upon each other in France. On April 15 an 
English army had been cut to pieces at Formigny, three thousand 
Englishmen slain, and the last hope of saving Normandy shattered. 
The fall of Bayeux and Caen followed. It was full time, therefore, 
for a strong hand and a clear head to assume control at the council 
board. 

In September York crossed from Ireland, and collecting a band 
of 4,000 retainers from the Mortimer estates, advanced upon Lon- 
don. This did not mean civil war necessarily, for it 
Y^)rT"se'D- ^^^ then no uncommon thing for gentlemen of high 
^1450^^^' rank to parade the country attended by a small private 
army. He proposed simply to force himself upon the 
council and secure the controlling influence in the administration 
which was due his high rank. Yet this was not an easy task; the 
old Beaufort- Suffolk party had rallied around Queen Margaret, 
who in the general breakdown of her husband's government 
justly feared Duke Richard on account of his nearness to the 
crown and was industriously spreading rumors which made him 
responsible for the late risings. Margaret's chief supporter w;as 
Edmund Beaufort, the duke of Somerset, whose unfortunate ill 
humor in 1447 had been largely responsible for the renewal of the 
war in France, but who had returned home to ally himself with 
Margaret, now that the Lancastrian throne itself was in danger, 
and, although Richard of York succeeded in forcing a declaration 



464 EIVALRY OF LANCASTER AND YORK [hknry vi. 

of confidence from the king, Margaret and Beaufort managed to 
keep him out of the council for three years. 

In the meanwhile the court party were sinking under the 
opprobrium of having wrecked the English cause in France; the 

people could not forget that Margaret was a French- 
'v^^.^Iaf^t-, woman, and saw in the continued reverses of English 

arms only so many evidences of friendship for her 
native country and of treacherous betrayal of the land of her 
adoption; they believed her capable of any villainy. Edmund 
Beaufort could not help her; he had lost France, the best that 
could be made of his conduct of the war, and to him passed all 
the odium which had once been heaped upon poor Suffolk. 
Affairs, moreover, were rapidly passing from bad to worse in 
France. Cherbourg, the very last English stronghold in Nor- 
mandy, had fallen just before the return of Eichard of York. The 

next year Bordeaux and Bayonne also fell, and thus was 

completed the ruin of the lucrative trade which English 
merchants had spent three hundred years in building up in the south- 
ern duchy. The Gascons were not French ; they had obeyed Eng- 
lish kings as overlords since the days of Henry II. and regarded 
themselves almost as a piece of England. Their appeal for help 
roused the government to new activity, and for a moment the skill 
and energy of John Talbot promised to restore the English hold 
on the lands south of the Garonne. But in an unfortunate and 
ill-judged attack upon Castillon in 1453, Talbot managed not only 
to lose his own life but to wreck his army and prepare the way for 
the reentry of the French into Bordeaux three months later. 
With the second fall of Bordeaux, of all England's conquests on 
the continent, only Calais and the outlying lands remained. 

The news of Castillon very perceptibly deepened the gloom 
which had been of late overspreading the kingdom. The king was 

completely unnerved ; the strain of insanity in his blood 

EffecU upon , . -, ^ -, p n • 

parties at began to assert itself, and to rumors of deepening mis- 
fortunes abroad was added yet this of the hopeless col- 
lapse of the king. It was evident that a protector must be 
appointed; but upon whom should the council thrust the thankless 
burden? Edmund Beaufort might under ordinary circumstances 



1453] FIRST PROTECTORATE OF TORK 465 

be selected for such a task; but the news from Castillon, which 
had played so sorrily with the king's wits, had also dissipated the 
last remaining influence of Somerset. Just then he was the most 
generally hated man in England. Charges of peculation, cow- 
ardice, incompetency, and darkest treachery were in the air. 
There was no man of all the council, therefore, who dared face the 
opprobrium of naming him as protector. Richard Duke of York was 
the only other possible candidate. He had proved himself cautious 
and wise; neither could his nearest friends say that he had any 
designs upon the crown, or had other motives in seeking prefer- 
ment than to serve the king and the state. His prominence 
among the princes of the blood naturally gave him great personid 
influence. He had, moreover, married into the powerful Neville 
family, who in the fifteenth century controlled one-third of the 
peerages of England, and, although at the time a bitter feud existed 
between the elder branch of the Nevilles and the younger, the 
younger branch, to which Eichard's wife Cicely Neville belonged, 
was the more powerful. The birth of Prince Edward, October 13, 
1453, also strengthened the duke's position, since, now that 
Henry VI. had an heir, the enemies of York need no longer fear 
him as a future sovereign. All parties, therefore, looked to Rich- 
ard as the one man who could save the state. 

In December Somerset was seized and thrown into prison ; York 
tben assumed control of the government, replacing the friends of 
Somerset and Margaret with his own supporters. A few 
JmitrnfoTthe ^^o^^ths later, in consequence of the continued illness of 
government, the king, he was formally appointed protector. York's 
position apparently was now very strong. Richard, the 
brother of Cicely Neville, was not only the head of the younger branch 
of the Nevilles, he had also married the daughter of Thomas Mon- 
tague, Earl of Salisbury, the famous captain of Henry V. who had 
been killed before Orleans in 1428, and through her had succeeded 
to Montague's titles. His son, also a Richard, had married the 
heiress of the Beauchamps, and had likewise succeeded to the 
important earldom of Warwick, and had become the greatest land- 
owner in England, controlling the accumulated estates of the 
Beauchamps and the Despensers. He was an energetic, restless 



406 RIVALRY or LAXCASTER AND YORK [henky VI. 

spirit, and, combining with great wealth, personal talent, and en- 
ergy of high order, the nature of an adventurer, was altogether a 
rare lieutenant; he was the man to devise the most stupendous 
projects and carry them to a successful issue. With such sup- 
porters in the high places of state York was able to begin a 
vigorous administration, and soon imparted a more hopeful aspect 
to everything that pertained to public affairs. His influence 
was strong enough to stop a private war which had broken out 
between the Nevilles and the Percies in the north. Everywhere the 
government was winning respect ; an era of confidence and peace ap- 
parently was at hand, when the recovery of the king, in January, lioo, 
released Somerset, expelled York and the Nevilles from the council, 
and brought back Margaret and her friends once more to power. 

Thus far the Yorkists had conducted themselves with remark- 
able moderation and self-restraint for the times, and, although 
the lines separating them from the court or Lancastrian 
The Wars of party were already very definitely drawn, although party 
hegun. May, feeling was bitter and the tension severe, there was no 

1455. ° 

reason why the counter revolution, which had placed 
Margaret and Edmund Beaufort once more in control of the 
council, should be marked by any more serious step than the dis- 
missal of the Nevilles. Here, however, the anxiety of Margaret 
for the future of her little son and her suspicions of the ultimate 
purpose of York, led her to take a most unfortunate step, which at 
once imparted a new and far more serious aspect to the rivalry of 
the two parties. The new council had hardly established them- 
selves, when they summoned a parliament to meet at Leicester, 
an old Lancastrian town, "for the purpose of providing for the 
safety of the king's person against his enemies." The form of 
the unfortunate call, as well as the place designated for the meet- 
ing, was taken by York as a threat. He at once called upon 
Salisbury and AYarwick to arm themselves, and the three Eichards 
marched upon London, "coming" as they proclaimed, "to con- 
vince the king of the sinister, malicious, and fraudulent reports of 
their enemies." The Wars of the Roses ^ had begun. 

1 The badge of York was a white rose ; the red rose of Lancaster was 
not adopted until the last stage of the war. 



1455] 



THE SECOND PROTECTOEATE OE YORK 



467 



The sword was now drawn, and it was no easy matter to return 
it again to the scabbard, although both sides shrank from the 
Th nrst issue. Somerset hastily gathered a force of 3,000 men, 
Amml Mai ^^^' ^^^^ ^^^® king in his train, advanced to St. Albans 
22,1455. and took up his station within the city. The three 

Richards lay 
without the city. 
The king still 
hoped to end the 
matter without 
bloodshed and 
opened a parley 
with the rebels; 
but York sternly 
demanded as the 
first condition of 
truce that his 
enemies be de- 
livered to him, 
"to be dealt with 
as t h e y d e- 
served." The 
king refused, 
and the Yorkists 
at once attacked 
the town. Som- 
erset was slain 
and his troops 
routed; the king 
was powerless to 
make further 
resistance, and, 
upon the return 

of his malady in the fall, York was again appointed pro- 
tector. 

The recovery of the king in January put an end to the second 
protectorate of York; but the king's part in public affairs was only 




408 RIVALRY OF LANCASTER AND YORK [henky vi, 

nominal and York's influence still remained dominant in the coun- 
cil. Warwick was made captain of Calais, a most important posi- 
tion, because it gave him virtually the command of the Channel. Ho 

made use of his position to carry on a vigorous course 
protectorate of privateering against Spanish, French, and Hanseatic 

merchantmen, and soon became the idol of the sail- 
ors and the merchants of the southern ports. _ The nation felt 
that the troubles were now over, and that the vigorous hand at 
the helm was a permanent guarantee of peace. Even the poor 
king tried to see things in a more hopeful light and proposed a 
great feast of reconciliation. The idea pleased such wily poli- 
ticians as York and Margaret, who were only waiting for an oppor- 
tunity to secure some new advantage in the quarrel, which had 
lost nothing of its bitterness in the three years of quiet which had 

followed St. Albans. A procession marched to St. 

Paul's, friend and foe walking hand in hand, Margaret 
and the duke of York following the king. The victors of St. 
Albans paid for masses for the souls of the men whom they had 
slain, and oaths of friendship were exchanged. 

The farce of the reconciliation probably deceived no one save 
the kind-hearted king, whose generous nature failed to fathom the 

bitterness which separated Margaret and her enemies. 
Margaret Yet all miffht again have gone well had Margaret been 

renews the o o o o 

attack upon content to let her quarrel rest. But the improved con- 

I orZf , 1459. ^ ^ 

dition of the king gave her new courage and she once 
more laid her plans to destroy York. Early in 1459 she secured 
the dismissal of the duke and his supporters from the council. In 
September she assembled an army in the king's name and sum- 
moned Salisbury to London. Although the attack was thus 
directed at the Nevilles, York understood its real object and at 
once took the field. In September an attempt of Lord Audley to 
prevent the junction of Salisbury and York at Bloreheath, resulted 
in a victory for Salisbury; but at Ludlow the Yorkists broke up in 
a panic when they found themselves confronted by overwhelming 
numbers. York fled to Ireland; his son Edward Earl of March, 
Salisbury, and Warwick managed to reach Dover and get away to 
Calais. 



1459, 1460] THE ACTS OF ATTAI]S^DER 469 

Margaret's triumph could hardly have been more complete had 

she won a pitched battle. Her enemies were now scattered and 

the leaders driven out of England. The Lancastrians 
The Pnrlict- 
mentof accordingly assembled in a parliament at Coventry and 

November, under Margaret's direction took measures, as they 
thought, to make permanent the results of their vic- 
tory. For the first time an English parliament passed an act of 
attainder; a far more terrible weapon than the old appeal of 
treason, which the first parliament" of Henry IV. had forbidden. 
By it the property of the condemned, as well as his life, was for- 
feited; furthermore, unlike the decree of an ordinary court of law, 
the king could not reverse such an act ; only the power which had 
passed an act of attainder could undo it. Such bills were now 
brought forward against York, Salisbury, and Warwick. 

The acts of attainder were a serious mistake. Margaret in 

thus abusing her victory in a way that could not be undone, was 

virtually forcing the revolution. York and the Nevilles 

Mistake of ^ o 

the acts of had been fisihting heretofore simply for the control of 
attainder. o o l j 

the government; Margaret now compelled them to fight 

for their lives and for the rights of their children. They were, 
moreover, by no means so reduced that they could not strike back. 
An army of 20,000 men had broken up and slunk away at Lud- 
low; but Margaret, by taking no steps to win over the scattered 
followers of Eichard, had left them to be drawn together again, 
the moment the leaders should have recovered heart. The ram- 
ifications of Neville influence were many. There were ten thousand 
secret channels under the control of the three Richards which they 
would not fail to operate in furthering discontent and reaction. 
Warwick was still captain of Calais; the fleet was at his disposal, 
and the seaport towns of southern England, now thoroughly dis- 
affected, inclined to his support. 

The winter of 1459 and 1460 the exiles spent in preparing for a 
descent upon England. Early in June the preparations were all 
Descent of I'eady. Salisbury and Warwick landed in Kent and 
uponKmf^ moved boldly upon London. Later York crossed from 
1480. Ireland to Wales and entered England from the west, 

where he could always count upon the support of the Morti- 



470 RIVALRY OF LANCASTER AND TORK [henry VI. 

mer tenants. The evil effects of Margaret's severity were fully 
apparent. The Nevilles of the south flocked to the standards 
of Salisbury and Warwick, The king retired to Coventry. Lon- 
don, whose people had no love to waste on the French queen, 
opened her gates to the rebels; assured, however, by the declara- 
tion of Salisbury and Warwick that they had no quarrel with the 
king, and came only to restore good government to the realm. The 
wavering now flocked in from middle and eastern England, and, 
early in July, Salisbury and Warwick advanced to Northampton 
where the Lancastrians were marshalled in force. The battle was 
fought on the 10th; the Lancastrians were routed and the king 
again taken. 

From Northampton the Yorkist army returned to London. Li 

the person of the king, they held the key to the whole situation, 

and could cast the onus of treason and rebellion against 

TJ10 Y^ovl^'i^ts 

againin '' the authorized government upon their enemies. Their 
first step was to reorganize the council in the king's 
name and issue a call for a parliament, which met at Westminster 
in October. The new parliament, as a matter of course, was as 
thoroughly Yorkist in its sympathies, as the parliament which had 
met the November before at Coventry had been Lancastrian, and 
its first act was naturally to undo the work of its predecessor. 
While parliament was in session, York reached London, 
marching from the west. The successes of his friends had appar- 
ently turned his head; his actions are in marked con- 
Yoriiciaims trast with the shrewd caution which had up to this 

the crown. ^ 

Thecompro- point marked his progress. He at once assumed the 

misc. ■•■ . 

airs of royalty; turned the king out of his palace, and 
appearing before the astonished Lords, laid his hand upon the 
throne and claimed it as his by right of birth. Richard found, 
however, that he had liien to deal with. The Lords remaiued 
silent, and Warwick openly declared his surprise and his disap- 
proval; he would not violate his oath to the stricken king; he 
would not give the lie to every pledge which he and his father had 
made to the people. Then York's better sense revived. He saw 
that he had gone too far; and graciously accepted a compromise. 
The king was restored to his palace and his honors ; but York was 



1460] WAKEFIELD 471 

to be designated as his heir in the place of Margaret's son; he was 
also to be given the title of Prince of Wales and granted an income 
of 10,000 marks; the law against treason was to be extended to 
include all plots against his person or authority. Parliament 
sanctioned the arrangement by a formal act and the king 
acquiesced. 

It was now the turn of Margaret to be roused to acts of desper- 
ation. The disinheritance of her son ^ had transferred the war 
from a strife of rival political factions to a war of rival 
fr^m'pii'^3 royfil houses. In the months which had followed 
Margaret, Northampton she had wandered with her little son, at 
times almost alone and always in imminent peril, to 
reach the land of the Scots at last, where she found refuge at the 
court of her husband's kinsman, the youthful James III., grand- 
son of Jane Beaufort. Here Margaret received encouragement and 
assistance, and was soon able to take the field again at the head of 
an army recruited from the borders; simple farmer lads, the most 
part drawn from Lancastrian and Percy lands, clad in rusty armor 
and mounted upon lean steeds, but glad to follow their queen in 
hope of avenging her wrongs and plundering the rich homes of the 
south. York and Salisbury with a small band of six thousand men 
advanced to Sandal Castle near the town of Wakefield ; their pur- 
pose was to watch the marauding bands of Margaret until March 
and Warwick could bring up their men. A well contrived ruse, 
however, lured York into hazarding a battle at Wakefield, Decem- 
ber 29, 1460. York's little army was cut to pieces; he himself 
was slain in battle; his second son, Edmund the earl of Eutland, 
a fine lad, jast approaching manhood, was dispatched in cold 
blood by Lord Clifford, in revenge for the death of his own father 
who had fallen at St. Albans. The earl of Salisbury was taken 
and beheaded the next day at Pontefract. The heads of the 
fallen chiefs were borne to York and there set up over the gates; 
the head of York adorned in derision with a paper crown. 

The rumor of Margaret's victory rapidly spread through the 
north and soon brought other recruits flocking to her banners 
from both sides of the border to the number of 40,000. But her 
success was again to prove her undoing. She had never appre- 



472 EIVALRY OF LANCASTER AND YORK [hbnry vi. 

ciafcecl the national sentiment which her foreign birth had arrayed 
against Iier. This sentiment was now doubly quickened over all 

middle and southern England by rumors of the barbar- 
'cross^nd^ itios perpetrated by the horde of border ruffiaus wiio fol- 
stAibaiis, lowed at her heels. The formal alliance with the Scots, 

moreover, had still further alienated the English, so 
that for the first time the war began to assume a really national 
character. Four armies were in the field; the earl of Warwick 
with 30,000 men lay at St. Albans, waiting the approach of Mar- 
garet who was advancing upon London by the Ermine Street, 
burning the cities and laying waste the fields in her path; York's 
son, Edward the earl of March, laj in the Severn valley at the 
head of an army of 10,000 men of the Marches; while Owen Tudor 
who had married Catharine, Henry V.'s widow, and his son Jasper, 
Earl of Pembroke, were advancing with a Welsh army and threat- 
ened March's rear. Edward was only in his nineteenth year, but 
at such times lads become men in a day. He knew it was useless 
to attempt to join Warwick with the Tudor force intact behind 
him, and accordingly turned upon the Tudors, and on February 
3, 1461 beat them at Mortimer's Cross, slaying Owen Tudor. 
Two weeks after this brilliant victory, February 17, 1461, Mar- 
garet came upon Warwick at St. Albans, drove the Yorkists out 
of the town and regained possession of the king. 

The withdrawal of Warwick from St. Albans left the road to 
London open. Here at last was Margaret's opportunity. Yet for 

some unaccountable reason she delayed, and the last op- 
Thc Yorkists ./ ^ j. 

secure portuuitv of savine' the House of Lancaster was lost. 

T Ol'i flotl -L •/ o 

Saturday, The Londoners were hourly expecting the arrival of the 

JSlarch 8 j i. o 

northern horde, and, trembling for the safety of their 
city, had already sent "certain aldermen and commissioners ... to 
speak with the queen's council, to entreat that the northern men be 
sent home to their country. For the city of London did dread 
sore to be robbed and spoiled." But Warwick and Edward, hav- 
ing now joined forces at Chipping-Norton, had learned of Mar- 
garet's blunder, and were hastening by forced marches to th"ow 
themselves between her and the capital. On March 7, the Lon- 
doners heard of their approach and at once stopped the supply 



1461] EDWARD IV. PROCLAIMED 473 

vans which Henry had ordered to be sent to St. Albans. The 
next day, amid great rejoicing on the part of the populace, the 
Yorkists marched through the gates into the city. 

Only four months had passed since Eichard of York's proposal 
to assume the crown had been met by the silence of his lords and 
Edward IV. the open protest of his great captain. But these four 
^arc7i™f ' months had made a complete change in the sentiments 
^'^'^^' of men like Warwick whose kinsmen had been slain at 

Wakefield and St. Albans. The nation also could not forgive the 
ferocious French woman who had brought a horde of wild Scotch- 
men into the heart of England, burning their cities and plunder- 
ing their homes. They had nothing against the gentle Henry, 
but they knew that to be loyal to Henry meant to be loyal to his 
French wife. The Yorkist leaders, therefore, had no doubt 
already accepted the deposition of Henry and the elevation of the 
earl of March as forced upon them by the logic of their position. 
Accordingly, the next morning after the entry into the city, 
Edward called together a council of lords and went through the 
form of declaring his right to the crown, and they in response 
declared Henry deposed and proclaimed Edward king. At Clerk - 
enwell Fields, George Neville, the bishop of Exeter, addressed the 
soldiers and explained Edward's claim to the throne. A great 
meeting of the populace was also held at St. John's Guild and 
when the question was formally put to the people, "Shall Edward 
be youi king?" the assembly shouted in tumultuous approval 
"Yea, yea. King Edward!" A deputation then waited upon the 
new king and formally notified him of the choice of the people. 
The reign of Edward IV. had begun. 



CHAPTER VIII 



THE FALL OF YORK AND THE CLOSE OF THE DYNASTIC STEUGGLE 



EDWARD ir.. 1461-1483 
EDWARD V.,14S3 
RICHARD in.. 14S3-14S5 

THE BEAUFORTS 

John of Gaunt =(3) Catharine Swynford 



John Beaufort, 

Earl of Somerset, 

d. 1410 



Henry Beaufort, 
Bislioj* of Winchester 
and Cardinal, 
d. 1447 



Owen Tudor, 

killed at Morti- 
mer's Cross 
1461 

I 

Jasper Edmund 

Tudor Tudor. 

Earl of 

Richmond, 

d. 1456 



John Beaufort, 
1st Dulie of Somer- 
set, d. 1444 



Eduumd Beaufort, 
Duke of Somerset, 
killed at 1st battle 
of St. Albans, 
1455 
I 



: Margaret 



Henry Beaufort, 
Dulte of Som- 
erset, beiieaded 
after Hexliam, 
1464 



Thomas Beaufort 

Earl of Exeter, 

d. 1426 



Jane=James I., 

of Scotland, 

1423 



Edmund, 
Duke of Som- 
erset, be- 
headed after 
Tewkesbury, 
1471 



Jolin, 
d. 1471 



Henry VII., 1485-1509i 



Margaret, 

m. Humphrey, 

Earl of 

Strafford 



Henry, Duke of 

Buckingham 

beheaded, 1483 



Character 
of f/ie.so- 
calkdParlia 
mcntary 
Gi)mrn,mcnt 
of the Hotise 
of Lancaster. 



The weakness of the House of Lancaster lay partly in the fact 
that its kings never outgrew their defective title; partly in the 
fact that they had accepted a crown encumbered with 
enormous debts, a result of the extravagant wars and 
extravagant living of their predecessors. They were 
thus compelled to throw themselves without reservation 
upon the support of parliament. This dependence 
upon parliament, however, was not an element of strength, for the 
parliaments of the fifteenth century represented, not the nation, 
but a coterie of nobles, who possessed more land than the crown and 
the rest of the nation combined, whose numbers had diminished, 
but whose wealth and selfishness had increased, and who, in spite 
of laws against livery and maintenance, had continued to augment 

474 



1406-1445] LANCASTRIAN ELECTION LAWS 475 

their retinues of armed retainers, overawe the local courts, and 

defy justice. 

The House of Commons as yet exerted very little independent 

influence as an instrument of government. In, the fifteenth century 

in particular it was completely dominated by the House 

of the of Lords; nor had the nobles in power any difficulty in 

Commons. , ,^ ■ ■,•^ • 

getting a House to their liking whenever they had 

impeachments to secure, bills of attainder to pass, or confiscations 
to be approved. It was an easy matter to overawe sheriffs by 
packing the county courts with their "bullies;" still easier to 
bribe sheriffs to send iu false returns or to spring~an election upon 
the people before sufficient notice had been given in the shires. 

The Lancastrian kings had recognized the evil and sought a 
remedy in a series of laws designed to secure the independence of 
elections. Thus in 1406 it was prescribed that a parlia- 
E^Mattonof mentary election should be held always at the regular 
Lancastrian meeting of the county court next succeeding the recep- 
tion of a writ. But only a few regularly attended these 
courts, and it was still possible for the sheriff by passing the 
notice quietly to his friends, to pack the court with an irrespon- 
sible crowd of retainers and carry the election in some such way as 
primaries used to be carried in some of the American cities. It 
was therefore necessary to follow the law of 1406 by another law in 
1430 which limited the right of election to freeholders whose lands 
were worth at least 40 shillings a year; and when the sheriffs began 
to bring in freeholders from neighboring counties, two years 
later the right was still further limited to residents. An act of 
1445 further prescribed that each sheriff should send the notice of 
an election to those cities or boroughs in his county which were 
entitled to return members, and that a deputation should report 
the results at the court of the shire and see that the sheriff regu- 
larly attached the returns of the boroughs to his return of the 
election for the shire. 

These laws were the result of a brave effort on the part of the 
government to rescue the Commons from the control of the noble 
born politicians who were playing fast and loose in order to control 
the patronage of the government; but the great lords paid little 



476 THE PALL OF YORK [ 



Edward IV. 



more attention to laws for the regulation of parliamentary elec- 
tions than they did to the laws against livery and maintenance, 
and the party in power continued to get up parliaments 

FcviJlxtvc of 

theEJectwns to Order as before. Moreover these very laws, insti- 
of Lancas- tuted no doubt with the best of intentions, by disfran- 
chising the free copyholder and the villain, separated 
the Commons still farther from the body of the people and com- 
mitted it for the next four hundred years to the control of the 
lords of the soil. It is no marvel, therefore, that the House of 
Commons soon lost the respect of the nation and was left entirely 
to the control of the politicians, or that the so-called parliamen- 
tary government of the House of Lancaster, valuable as it was 
in furnishing precedents for a later day, when the terms Lords and 
Commons should come to have a very different meaning, during 
the reign of Henry VI. rapidly developed into a tyranny of certain 
great families over the crown. Here was the basis of the dynastic 
revolution which followed. Here also is the exi^lanation of the 
readiness with which the people submitted to the complete over- 
throw of the whole flimsy Lancastrian structure. 

The reign of Edward IV. began with the proclamation of 

March 9, 14G1. On the same day the horde at St. Albans broke 

up and began its homeward march, apparently dissatis- 

^*r«^ , fied because Henry would not allow them to continue 

reign of J 

Edwardiv., fjieir plunderino;. Edward without stopping for a coro- 

1401-1470. ^ C ^_^ ° 

nation followed the retiring horde with the energy 
which was characteristic of him in supreme moments, and over- 
taking them at Towton near York, on the 28th and 29th of March, 
successfully fought the most obstinate and bloody battle of the 
war. The heralds counted the slain to the number of twenty- 
eight thousand. Edward entered York in triumph, while Mar- 
garet and Henry sought safety bej^ond the northern border. 

Erom Towton Edward returned to London to be crowned, Juno 
38th ; his brothers George and Eichard, also, were created dukes 

respectively of Clarence and Gloucester. In November 
Towton"^ parliament met and as its first duty passed an act which 

confirmed all that had been done by Edward ; it then 
declared the Lancastrian kings usurpers, those who had been 



1461-1464] EDWARD IV. 477 

active in supporting them attainted and their possessions forfeited, 
and Henry and Q,ueen Margaret traitors. 

Edward was by no means an ideal king, though he possessed 
many good qualities. He had a fine presence ; was tall, muscular, 

and handsome, and possessed a fearless eye. He had 
Edward}^ great skill in war and was uniformly successful. 

He loved field sports but he loved also less worthy 
amusements, and knew no self-restraint when once his appetite 
was aroused. He was cruel, yet not more cruel than the 
age when all public men had been hardened and embittered 
by ten years of civil strife. Li politics Edward's abilities 
were not as conspicuous as in war; he was careless in mat- 
ters of business, trustful to simplicity and altogether lacking 
in foresight. Yet he saw clearly the causes of the failure of 
the Lancastrian government and made no secret of his hostility 
to the nobles. 

When Edward returned to London, ho had left Warwick and 
his brother, John Neville, the newly made earl of Montague, to 

carry on the struggle in the north. They reduced the 
Continuance great Percy strongholds, but were compelled to take 

nf t^truf/fjle . . 

in the north, and retake them several tmies in the course of a few 
months. Margaret in her desperation had given up 
Berwick to the Scots in return for their aid; she had also prom- 
ised to give up Calais for the support of Louis XL Both gave her 
some assistance; Louis actually sent her 2,000 men. But an 
invasion of Scotland in 1462 compelled the Scots to abandon Mar- 
garet's cause and expel Henry VI. from the country. Still the 
fires of this fatal war, which in the ferocious, vindictiveness of 
both parties has had few equals in the history of civilized nations, 
smouldered on. In April 1464 Montague defeated Henry of 
Somerset at Hedgeley Moor and a few weeks later again at Hex- 
ham. At Hexham Somerset was taken and at once put to death. 
A year later Henry VI. was also taken at Waddington Hall on the 
Lancastrian estates whither he had gone when the Scots had 
turned him out of Scotland. A few castles still held out in 
Wales, but the throne of Edward was secure so far as the House 
of Lancaster was concerned. 



478 



THE FALL OF YORK 



Tedward IV, 



Since the battle of Towton Edward had given himself up to the 
gayeties of a luxurious court, leaving the cares of government to 

Warwick. Yet he was not so steeped in his life of 
andw^ar- indolence that he could not keep a watchful eye upon 

his minister. Thus when he found that Warwick was 
wife hunting for him in the courts of the continent he quietly 
slipped off to Grafton and secretly married Elizabeth Woodville, the 
widow of Sir John Gray, a Lancastrian who had fallen at the 
second battle of St. Albans.^ The high spirited minister in the 
meantime was left to go on with his negotiations until the last 
moment, when Edward cut short his fine plans by announcing his 
marriage. Warwick plainly had been duped, and in a way that could 
not be easily forgotten. Other events followed which still further 
widened the opening breach between Edward and the great Neville. 
In connection with his marriage scheme, Warwick had also 
developed a policy of alliance with France as the best security for 

Edward's throne. But Edward was quite disposed to 
Second follow out the traditional policy of his predecessors and 

of Warwick, jjeep France humble by building up Burgundy; its 

magnificent court was far more to his taste than the 
mean surroundings of the niggardly and spiderlike Louis XL In 
1467, therefore, while Warwick was maturing his plans and was 
apparently about to secure the long hoped for treaty with Louis 
XL, Edward was entertaining Burgundian ambassadors and 



^THE WOODVILLES 

Eichard, = Jacqiietta of Luxembourg, 
1st Earl I widow of John of 
Rivers, | Bedford 
d. 1469 I 



Anthony 

Lord Scales, 

2d Earl Rivers, 

d. 1483 



John, 
d. 1469 



Lionel, 
Bishop of 

Salisbury 



Richard, 
3d Earl 
Rivers 



Elizabeth 



(other daughters) 



Thomas, 
1st Mar(iuis 
of Dorset, 

d. 1501, 
ancestor of 
Lady Jane 
Grey 



1 m. John Grey, d. 1455 



3 m. Edward IV. 



Richard, 
d. 1483 



Edward V. 
d. 1483 



Ricliard, 
Dulte of 
Yorli, 
d. 1483 



Elizabeth Catharine 
m. m. William 



Heney 
VII. 



Courte- 
nay. Earl 
of Devon 



(otlier 
daugh- 
ters) 



1469] FIKST RISIKG OF THE NEVILLES 479 

secretly pledging his sister Margaret to the new duke Charles the 
Eash. In the meantime, also, with shrewd cunning he had taken 
the precaution to build up around him a new family of nobles to 
offset the power of the Nevilles. He made his father-in-law. Sir 
Richard Woodville, treasurer, then raised him to the rank of earl 
as Earl Rivers, and finally appointed him constable of England. 
He also found husbands among the peerage for his wife's sisters, 
of whom there were a round half dozen. Equally distinguished 
marriages were found for the queen's brother, also a Richard Wood- 
ville, and for Lord Thomas Grey, the elder of the queen's two sons 
by her first marriage ; Anthony Woodville, another brother of the 
queen had already married a wealthy heiress and in her right had 
become Lord Scales. 

Thus in a day Edward had raised at his side a worthy rival of 
the Nevilles, AYarwick, who had more shrewdness perhaps than the 
clever young king gave him credit for, fully comprehended 
'^'tting of the object of the king s policy and began to counterplot, 
proposing to marry his own daughter Isabelle to the 
king's brother, George Duke of Clarence. Clarence who was weak, 
inconstant, and vain, jealous of the Woodvilles and anxious to be 
considered the heir to the throne, readily lent himself to War- 
wick's schemes. Edward attempted to block the game by forbid- 
ding the marriage, but Warwick sent his family off to Calais, where 
Clarence afterward Joined them and the marriage ceremony was 
duly performed. But the marriage of Clarence, apparently, was 
only a step in a greater plan for securing the hold of the Nevilles 
upon the high places in the state. The surviving Lancastrians 
had suffered much ; the bitter memories of the war could not be 
forgotten. The Yorkists also were growing discontented and 
Jealous of the preferment of the Woodvilles. Here were materials 
enough for the organization of a dangerous plot. 

It is not known that Warwick was implicated in the first rising 
of the year 1469, which was a small affair, confined to the neigh- 
First rising ^orhood of York and, apparently, the result of strictly 
^evuies, ^ocal causes. It was soon followed, however, by a more 
1469. widely extended movement which was Joined by the 

Nevilles and assumed such proportions as to defeat a royal army at 



480 THE PALL OP YOKE [edward IV. 

Edgecote on July 26, and a few days later again at Chepstow, 
where Earl Rivers and his son John Woodville, were taken and 
shortly after beheaded. Warwick and his new son-in-law, in the 
meantime, had hurried from Calais to Kent and, calling out the 
southern I^evilles, were marching north, not to assist Edward, but 
to seize him before he could rally from the discomfiture of Edge- 
cote. Their plans were entirely successful. Edward was taken at 
Olney near Coventry and brought to Warwick Castle. 

Warwick was now master of the situation; Edward IV, was a 

prisoner and the power of the Woodvilles broken. Yet Warwick's 

position was by no means secure. He was still hated 

^Wo/T'Wtcl'C 

inpower, and feared by the Lancastrians: nor could lie contrive 

1469. . . 

to hold Edward long in prison, for Edward's despotic 
ways had won the confidence of the great middle class, the 
burghers, who were weary of the quarrels of the nobles and wanted- 
to see a strong government once more established. Warvvick, 
therefore, made the best terms he could for himself and Clarence, 
and Edward was set at liberty. 

Any reconciliation, however, between Edward and his old com- 
panion in arms could neither be cordial nor lasting. The earl 

continued his policy and Edward watched for his oppor- 

Faiiureof tunity. It Came in the form of a rising in Lincoln- 

revolt of 

Clarence and shire, apparently stirred up by Warwick himself. 

1470. ' Edward met the insurgents near Stamford, March 12, 

1470, and used the royal artillery with such efl:ect that 
they speedily fled. The battle is known as "Lose-coat Field," from 
the frantic profusion with which the rebels threw away their coats 
which were decorated with the fatal badges of their leaders, hop- 
ing thereby to escape recognition. Sir Eobert Welles the leader of 
the insurgents was captured and beheaded. Before his death he 
confessed to an extensive plot in which Edward was to be dethroned 
and Clarence made king. Warwick of course was implicated and, 
without waiting for the return of Edward, took his son-in-law and 
fled the kingdom. Edward after his release in 1469 had issued a 
general pardon, but now he had no reason for sparing his enemies, 
and, contrary to his custom in the earlier wars, even descended to 
victims of humble rank. The refugees of Lose-coat Field were 



1470] THE SECOND RISIISTG OF THE XEVILLES 481 

hunted across the kingdom, and the hideous penalty which the 
barbaric laws of the period prescribed for treason, exacted for great 
and small; even the luckless sailors, who were waiting at South- 
ampton to take Warwick off, were seized and some twenty of them 
executed. In this instance, so thoroughly was the work done, 
that John Tiptoft, the earl of Worcester, who had the grewsome 
matter in hand, rose above the merely commonplace, winning for 
himself the nickname of "the butcher." It is also to be noticed 
that Tiptoft had the reputation of being one of the most accom- 
plished scholars of the times. 

It was now evident to Warwick that his only chance of over- 
reaching the Yorkist king was by making common cause with the 

exiled Margaret and returning to Enffland under the 
The second o o 

riling of the Lancastrian banners. Louis XL, who was anxious to 

break up the Burgundiau alliance of England, exerted 
his influence to bring about a reconciliation with Margaret, and 
furnished Warwick with ships and men and money; Warwick was 
to invade England for the purpose of restoring Henry VI., and 
Prince Edward, Margaret's son, now a lad of seventeen, was to 
marry Warwick's second daughter Anno. In England Warwick 
was not without his secret following, and in a few months the 
Nevilles through all the many ramifications of the family were ready 
for the rising. So secretly and so successfully were their plans 
carried out, so swiftly at last came the revolution, that within two 
weeks Edward's power had collapsed, and he himself was a 
fugitive on the way to the court of Louis's rival in Burgundy. 
Henry VI. was drawn out of the Tower and once more set up as 
the figure head of the government, but the real power lay in the 
hands of Warwick, the " King-Maker," as men were beginning to 
call the ambitious JSTeville. 

The suddenness of Edward's fall, instead of discouraging him, 
only put him on his mettle and called out those resources of energy 

and skill, the possession of which he had fully revealed 
ofHrnr^vL, ^^ Mortimer's Cross and Towton. As his rival had 
Marchmi.' ^PP^aled to Louis XL of France, he now appealed to 

Louis's enemy, Charles of Burgundy, who in self-defense 
was compelled to help his ally back again to his throne. Charles, 



483 THE FALL OF YORK [: 



Edward IV. 



however, was too sore pressed at home to render Edward much 
aid, and left him largely to his own resources. With 1,500 Eng- 
lishmen and 300 Germans who had been sent to him by Duke 
Charles, on March 14, 1471, he landed afc Eavenspur, the very 
spot where Henry of Bolingbroke had landed on a similar errand 
seventy-two years before. Like Henry, also, Edward declared that 
he came simply to demand the lands of his father. At York he 
actually took an oath that lie would not again lay claim to the 
crown of England. At the head of the little band of adventurers, 
however, he marched steadily southward, gathering to his standard 
the old retainers of his house from the north and west, and when 
he reached Nottingham, where his army had swelled to 
five tliousand men, he threw oft: all disguise and once 
more proclaimed his right to the throne. The position was one 
which would have delighted a Napoleon. Back of Edward lay Lord 
Montague, Warwick's brother, who had allowed the invaders to 
pass Pontefract and enter the Midlands; to the east lay Oxford 
who was hurrying up from Norfolk; before him lay Arch- 
bishop George Neville, another brother of Warwick, guarding 
London; the "King-Maker" himself lay at Warwick, while the 
duke of Clarence was advancing by forced marches from Glou- 
cestershire in the west. Thus from the four quarters of the com- 
pass, as many armies were closing in upon Edward and his wild 
adventure seemed almost run. It was a moment, however, to rouse 
all the matchless energy and courage of the man ; for Edward at 
times had flashes of real military genius somewhat akin to that 
of the great modern captain. Suddenly changing liis line of march, 
he made a swift descent upon Oxford and drove him back; without 
following his fleeing foes, he turned again to the south and 
advanced to Leicester, in order to face W^arwick who had reached 
Coventry. A battle was imminent; it was Warwick's hour, but 
in an unlucky moment he determined to wait for the arrival of 
Montague and Clarence. The delay gave Edward a respite and 
also gave some who wavered time to decide. Henry Percy of the 
old Northumberland house, whom Edward had restored to his 
earldom, had already joined him; but on April 4, Edward's 
brother, — "false, fleeting, perjured Clarence," who had been 



1471] BARNET 483 

grieved by the way in which Warwick had thrown him over in the 
interests of Margaret's son, carried out a project long meditated, 
and went over to Edward with his following. The defection of 
Clarence compelled Warwick to wait for Montague, and left 
Edward and Clarence free to march upon London, Archbishop 
George Neville had had little success in rousing the Londoners, 
many of whom were creditors of Edward and saw no hope of pay- 
ment save in his return to power. Hence Edward was allowed to 
enter the city without resistance, where he was speedily Joined 
by the Yorkists of the south in sufficient number to give him 
nearly 20,000 men. 

Edward entered London on Thursday, April 10, and on Sat- 
urday led his army out of the city by the Watling Street to 
meet Warwick at Barnet, now strengthened by the 
Avriii4 1471 ^1*^^^^^ ^^ Lords Montague and Oxford. On the night 
sundaii ^^ April 13 the armies encamped within cannon shot 
of each other. The Yorkists began the attack early in 
the morning, advancing under cover of a heavy mist ; but in the 
obscurity Edward had so miscalculated the position of the enemy 
that his left wing was seriously outflanked by Warwick's right, 
commanded by the earl in person,, and borne backward by over- 
whelming numbers began to retire. But unfortunately for War- 
wick the livery of Oxford was marked by a star with beams, which 
very much resembled the famous badge of York, the sun with 
rays, and his men pressing forward after the broken left wing of 
Edward and possibly losing their direction in the confusion, came 
suddenly face to face with the star of Oxford, and, in the fog mis- 
taking it for the Yorkist badge, began to fire upon their friends. 
The retainers of Oxford, with the example of Clarence in mind, 
supposing that the Nevilles had also gone over to the enemy, raised 
the cry of treachery and fled. The men of Warwick and Mon- 
tague, however, still held their own, and left the field at last only 
after six hours of desperate fighting, and when both Warwick and 
his brother had been slain. 

The very day of the battle of Barnet, Margaret, who had been 
held off for nearly three weeks by contrary winds, landed at Wey- 
mouth ; but Barnet had removed the last hope of rescuing her hus- 



484 THE FALL OF YORK [edwaed IV. 

band, and as soon as the fatal news reached her she turned to 

fight her way into Wales where she could be joined by the Welsh 

supporters of her house and possibly provide a rallying 

Tewkesbuw, point for the defeated Lancastrians of the north. But 
May 4, 1471. -I 

the citizens of Gloucester closed their gates and refused to 
allow her to cross the Severn. She then hastened on to the next 
crossing at Tewkesbury; but Edward was by this time close upon 
her track and her men reached Tewkesbury only to be set upon by 
Edward at the very moment when they were ready to begin the 
crossing. The Lancastrians fought as desperate men fight, but 
everywhere they were routed and everywhere the fierce Yorkists 
stained their victory by wholesale slaughter. Among the slain was 
Henry's son, Prince Edward, according to tradition murdered after 
the battle in cold blood in the presence of King Edward himself. 
Fifteen great earls sought sanctuary in the abbey church of 
Tewkesbury; Edward promised to spare their lives but two days 
later sent them all to the block. Among them were Edmund, 
Duke of Somerset, and his youngest brother John, the last of the 
male line of the Beauforts. From Tewkesbury Edward returned 
to London to continue the slaughter of his foes; on the night that 
he entered the city, Henry VI. was murdered in his lonely cell in 
the Tower; how was never known. George Neville, the church- 
man, was cast into prison. Others less conspicuous, if rich, were 
allowed to buy their lives by heavy ransoms; the poor were hurried 
to the gallows without redress. 

The four years which followed Tewkesbury were years of com- 
parative quiet. Edward continued to summon parliaments as 

before; he laid important measures before them and 
reianoT^^ appeared to seek their consent, but the independence of 
wyl^i^s' parliament had passed away, not to be recovered again 

until the men of the seventeenth century should wrest it 
from the Stuarts. The nobles of England were by no means exter- 
minated; but the strength of the great house of Neville, which had 
overthrown tlic House of Lancaster and raised Edward to the 
throne, had been entirely shattered, and it was not likely that any 
other family would succeed to their influence; Edward would see 
to that. The nearest heir of John of Gaunt, the son of Margaret 



1475] PICQUIGNY 485 

Beaufort, was a penniless exile in hiding in a foreign land; a strip- 
ling youth, without money and without friends, of whom Edward 
had little to fear. The people were weary of civil war; the cities, 
for the most part loyal to York, were well pleased, and all were 
willing to give the new dynasty a trial. 

Instead, however, of turning his mind to securing the solid 
advantages of peace, Edward must first try his hand in the foreign 

game of politics where so much English money had 
fakes^^'^rt already been sunk and where so many English lives had 
^wars^^ been squandered. He allowed Charles to draw him into 

an alliance, with the virtual dismemberment of north- 
ern France as its object. Charles was to extend his territories at 
the expense of the eastern domains of Louis, and Edward was to 
have K"ormandy and Aquitaine. In 1474, Edward began active 
preparations to carry out his part of the engagement. The sub- 
servient parliament voted its supplies, and the next year Edward 
embarked, taking with him, it is said, the largest and best 
equipped expedition which had yet set sail from English shores. 
His plan was to land at Calais and advance directly into the heart 
of France, while Burgundy and Brittany were to push in their 
armies from the east and the west. The plan was ably conceived; 
and had Edward's allies supported him, it is difficult to see how 
Louis XL could have saved himself. But Duke Charles was 
carrying on a stubborn campaign against the little town of Neuss 
across the Ehine, in Avhich he so wasted his strength that he could 
bring no army to Edward's assistance. Edward, who was no man 
to chase a chimera, abandoned his allies in disgust and made his 
own terms with Louis. Louis, the business man on the throne, 
who always preferred fighting his battles with "words and 
money," had counted the cost of the new war, and coolly deter- 
mined to appropriate the money, not to raising soldiers, but to 

buying up his enemies. The two kings met on a 
pYcmirnii bi'idge of the Somme at Picquigny, and agreed to a seven 
ujf' ^^' years' truce; Louis also agreed to pay Edward 75,000 

crowns down and a further sum of. 50,000 crowns for 
the ransom of the unhappy Margaret.^ He also had magnificent 

^For full terms of treaty see Ramsay, Lancaster andYork, II, pp. 413, 413. 



486 THE FALL OF YOEE [edward IV. 

pensions for Edward's leading nobles and a grand snpper for the 
common soldiers, — for Louis could spend money like water when 
it came to affairs of state. The affair all in all was not creditable 
and Edward suffered in the popular esteem; but for this he cared 
very little, so long as disapproval spent itself in grumbling and did 
not lead to open outbreak. 

The lesson which Edward had learned was not lost, and for the 
rest of his reign he remained satisfied with the military laurels of 

his youth, and gave himself to the work of securing the 
tyranny of foundations of his throne. He was, however, far from 

possessing the intellectual and moral qualities necessary 
to make the most of his position. He was no statesman like the 
first Edward ; he was no organizer like the second Henry ; he was 
bold and clever, but he possessed none of that farsighted and 
patient cunning which served his contemporary Louis XL in lieu 
of more kingly qualities. Hence he took no steps to organize the 
results of his victory, or to justify the confidence of his subjects by 
leaving an efficient public service behind him, and much of his 
work had to be done over again. He was a strong king; but his 
strength was founded upon ruthless cruelty and injustice. He 
had never forgotten the treachery of his brother Clarence, and in 
1478 appeared in person before the House of Lords to accuse him 
of treason; the charge was sustained and a few weeks later the 
unfortunate Clarence was secretly- murdered in the Tower; 
drowned, it was said, in a butt of Malmsey. The king who spared 
not his own brother would not be more tender of lesser folk. He 
had received a bankrupt treasury from his predecessors and he 
seized every means within his power, fair or foul, to bring in money. 
The revolution which had borne hiin to the throne, had put within 
his hands ample means of enriching himself by simply declaring 
forfeitures against his unsuccessful foes. The revolt of 1470 in 
particular had jilaced the vast wealth of the Nevilles at his disposal 
and afforded him an opjjortunity for new and still more extensive 
confiscations. 

The courts of justice also took advantage of the prevailing 
suspicion of defection and conspiracy, and turned in a never 
ceasing stream of revenues, gathered from thousands of petty 



1483] DEATH OF EDWARD IV. 487 

fines and forfeitures. Not satisfied with the old forms of exaction, 
Edward's genius devised a new metliod of extortion known as a 
"benevolence." Previous kings had exacted "forced loans" from 
their subjects which might or might not be repaid. Edward dis- 
carded the fiction of a loan altogether and received what he called 
"free will offerings" from his loyal subjects. He even made per- 
sonal solicitations and wrote letters in his own hand requesting 
gifts from those who dared not refuse them. There is no record 
of any protest against these tyrannies on the part of parliament or 
of any complaint from the people. It is true that Edward in his 
later years called few parliaments, nor gave the nation many 
opportunities to express its will in legal form ; and yet there were 
times in the past when barons and people had compelled reluctant 
kings to summon parliaments that the nation might register its 
disapproval of him or his ministers. Of the few parliaments 
which Edward summoned, none saw fit to question his measures 
or to bring forth the old cries of "privilege" or "liberty." For 
the first time since the day of John Lackland, the reign of an Eng- 
lish king was allowed to pass without a single enactment inspired 
by these magic words. 

And yet full of injustice and cruelty, full of the spirit of 

tyranny as the reign of Edward was, men justified it because all 

felt that a strong king was the need of the hour. After 

The desire 

for a strong the extreme Weakness of the parliamentary kings, the 
unutterable chaos and misery which attended the last 
administration, the nation apparently beheld the pendulum swing- 
ing to the other extreme, not only without regret, but with posi- 
tive satisfaction. 

In 1483 Edward died, worn out by dissipation and wild living 
at the age of forty-two. His eldest son, known as Edward V., 
was a lad of twelve years; and although Edward's 
Edivarciiv., despotic policy had left little to be feared from the 
Lancastrian sentiment which still lingered among his 
nobles, the people who had learned to dread a rule of protectors 
and regents received with a new foreboding of evil the news of the 
king's death; nor had they long to v;ait before their worst fears 
were realized. 



488 THE FALL OF YOEK [edward V. 

Eichard Duke of Gloucester had been commonly recognized as 

the staunch supporter and confidant of the late king. He had v/on 

great credit on the fields of Barnet and Tewkesbury, 
Richard, ° , i i t • • i n • 

Duke of where he had distinguished himself by personal darinaf, 

Gloucester. ., i • i 

and had contributed not a little to the success of his 
brother's arms. He was popular, for the people dearly love a 
brave man, and tliey had not yet had an opportunity to peer into 
the shadows of Eichard's character, although some grim stories 
were already afloat. Coming to man's estate in an age when 
political necessity was held to justify the utmost savagery in the 
butchering of fallen rivals, under a thin veneering of humanism, 
he concealed a peculiarly hard and cruel nature, which was capable 
of the blackest crimes, when such crimes were necessary to free 
him from the presence of an enemy, or to clear his path of a possi- 
ble rival. ^ Yet he was not devoid of natural aifection and was 
deeply attached to wife and son, and his spirits were visil^Iy affected 
by their early death. In tlie last months of his life, particularly, 
the sense of bereavement weighed upon him until he became the 
victim of a depressing melancholy ; a feeling of utter loneliness took 
possession of him. In all of which men saw the judgment of God. 
No sooner had Eichard learned of his brother's death than he 
began to scheme for the succession. It was an easy matter, com- 
paratively, to get rid of the Woodvilles and secure for , 
Woodviiica, himself the position of protector. The Woodvilles had 
never been popular; their power which was only of 
yesterday, had not yet taken sufficient root to enable them to stand 
v/ithout the support of royal favor. For a protectorate, moreover, 
there was the precedent of 1422. Hence no one showed any par- 
ticular alarm when Eichard seized the queen's brother. Earl Eivers, 
and her son, Sir Eichard Grey, and hurried them off to a northern 
prison, or when it was rumored that two other Woodvilles had fled 
the country or that the queen with Edward IV. 's second son 

' In a later day he was reijresented as an ugly hunchback, due perhaps 
to the commendable feeling that there must be some connection between 
the character of a man and his physical appearance. It is probable that 
one shoulder was higher than the other, but not enough to amount to 
deformity, or to interfere with the most active service on the battle field. 



1483] EICHARD OF GLOUCESTER 489 

Richard and her five daughters had fled to sanctuary at West- 
minster. The influence of the upstart Woodvilles was ended; that 
was pretty well understood. It was further known that Richard 
had the sanction of the council; that they had appointed him pro- 
tector and that the twenty-second of June was fixed for the coro- 
nation of the little Edward V. 

There were men on the council, however, who were the sworn 
friends of Edward IV., and who were devoted to his children, if 
not to his queen. Richard knew that as long as 
aainscontroi ^hesc men remained he must content himself with 
luni'iT"'"''' ^^® °^^® ^^ protector. The marked men were Will- 
iam Lord Hastings, the captain of Calais, Thomas 
Rotherham, the archbishop of York, and John Morton, the 
bishop of Ely. On June 13 Richard suddenly presented him- 
self before the council, accused Hastings of treason and 
without giving him any chance for trial or even reply had him 
dragged out into the castle yard and executed. Rotherham and 
Morton were cast into prison. This summary purging of the 
council was not altogether to the liking of the people, and for the 
moment their confidence in their favorite was shaken. Yet sus- 
picion was speedily allayed by the report which was industriously 
circulated by Richard's friends, that he had discovered a danger- 
ous conspiracy and that these measures were necessary to preserve 
the government. Three days later by the aid of the old time- 
server. Cardinal Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury, Richard 
persuaded the queen to send Edward's second son to join the little 
king who had been put into the Tower ostensibly for his own 
safety. 

With everything now in his hands, with the natural protectors 
of Edward IV. 's children either dead or in prison, Richard pro- 
ceeded to the last step. On Sunday June 22 Dr. 
Rwhard's Shaw, the brother of the Lord Mayor, preached a 

reign begun, t , ^ -j i. 

June 26, 1483. remarkable sermon from an open air pulpit in St. Paul's 
Churchyard, in which he attacked the marriage of 
Edward IV. and Elizabeth Woodville, and further stated that the 
children of Duke Clarence could not inherit the throne on account 
of their father's attainder, and that Richard of Gloucester was 



490 THE FALL OF YORK [ 



KiCHARD HI. 



therefore the rightful heir. Three days later an irregular assembly 
of Eichard's friends, which passed for a parliament, formally 
asserted his title to the crown and petitioned him to assume his 
rightful heritage. Eichard, after a fine show of hesitation, 
accepted, and on the morning of June 26 proceeded in state to 
Westminster Hall. 

Eichard was fully aware of the precarious nature of his hold on 
the crown, and at once endeavored by an ostentatious show of jus- 
tice and good government to cause men to forget if pos- 
DifflcuUies sible the circumstances by which he had come to the 

(tf position of , • 1 • 1 c 

Richard. throue. His danger, however, lay not m the revival or 
the shattered power of the Woodvilles or the Nevilles 
or the Lancastrians, but in the disappointed ambition of the men 
who had helped him to the throne, the ring of politicians who 
were inspired only by corrupt motives and now expected to be 
rewarded by enjoying the patronage of the government. The 
most prominent among these supporters of the king was Henry 
Stafford, the duke of Buckingham. He was a son of Sir Hum- 
phrey Stafford and a second Margaret Beaufort, daughter of that 
Edmund duke of Somerset who had been so unlucky in the last 
stages of the French war, and had been killed at the first battle of 
St. Albans in 1455. When therefore Eichard failed to reward 
Buckingham as he thought he had a right to expect, like Warwick 
he fell into a mood which prepared him for a leading part in a 
counter revolution. His first thought was of pressing his own 
claim to the crown ; for he was not only a Beaufort but a descend- 
ant of Thomas of Gloucester as well, but at Brecknock Castle, he 
was brought under the influence of Bighop Morton, his prisoner; 
and was persuaded to waive his own claim and unite with the Lan- 
„. . . castrians in pushing the claim of Henry Tudor Earl of 

Rising of f b J 

Bucking- Eichmond. The rising met with no success. The earl 

ham. First ° 

attempt of of l^ichmond set out from Brittany but was turned back 

Richmond, -^ 

148S. "by a storm; swollen streams prevented the insurgents 

in England from uniting their forces and Eichard easily crushed 
the isolated outbreaks, taking Buckingham himself, and sending him 
straight to the block. Yet it was not Eichard's policy now to shed 
blood and he pardoned the most of Buckingham's followers. 



1483-1485] kichard's PARLIAMEN"! 491 

Some time during the late insurrection, or just before, while 
Eichard was humoring the people of York by going through the 

form of a second coronation in their city, the two princes 
mT'^^incL ^^^ ^^^ been lost sight of since their imprisonment in 

the Tower, were quietly put to death, and their bodies 
buried under a stone staircase, where their bones were discovered 
two centuries later, in the time of Charles II. 

In 1483, however, the dreadful secret was locked up within the 
grim shadows of the Tower, and Richard's popularity was still 

high. In January the new king assembled a parliament, 
parliament, which first confirmed the action of the irregular gather- 
' ing of June, and then passed bills of attainder against 
Buckingham, Eichmond, Bishop Morton, and nearly a hundred 
others. But Richard displayed little eagerness in punishing his 
enemies. He was bent rather upon saving his popularity at any 
price, and at the petition of parliament hastened to con- 
demn some of the despotic practices of Edward IV., especially 
his trick of exacting benevolences and the custom of seizing the 
goods of an accused man before conviction. He also played for 
the support of the cities by granting greater freedom to commerce; 
while a statute, specially designed to encourage literature, forbade 
any one to hinder a stranger from coming into the country to sell 
books, "written or printed." 

No amount of generous concession, however, could dispel the 
gloom which now began to settle over the new reign. Richard's 

popularity was fast ebbing; men began to understand 
fiiadowsof ^^^ ^'^^^ character. His only son Edward died in April, 
feicm^'^'^ shortly after the parliament had declared him Richard's 

heir ; the death of his wife Anne Neville followed in 
March of the next year. The question of the succession was 
thus again opened and a rumor that Eichard proposed to marry 
Edward IV. 's daughter, Elizabeth, aroused such indignation that 
he was obliged to make a public declaration that such a step had 
not been thought of. 

In the meanwhile Henry, Earl of Richmond, was busily laying 
his plans for a second invasion of England. Richard had used hi« 
influence to get him expelled from Brittany, but the French court 



492 THE FALL OF YOEK [richakd 111. 

had given him a cordial welcome. Hither had come the exiled lords 

who had been attainted by Richard's parliament, and by July, 1485, 

Henry had gathered a small fleet at Harfleur. On 

The ccitI of 

Richmond in August 7 he landed at Milford Haven in Pembroke with 
about 2,000 men, and began his march across Wales to 
the Severn. He was among his own people and his army rapidly 
swelled in numbers as he advanced. Men felt that the blood- 
stained career of Richard was drawing to its close and hastened to 
join the standard of Richmond. One of Richard's lieutenants, 
Lord William Stanley, had been put in command of the Marches, 
but he secretly assured Henry of his support and allowed him to 
pass on toward mid-England, following slowly in his rear. Rich- 
ard in the meanwhile was concentrating his strength, and, as 
Henry drew near, advanced to Bosworth, where he lay encamped 
on the night of the 21st of August. He was surrounded by treach- 
ery and treason; he knew not whom to trust; defection was in the 
air. The night, it is said, he passed in sleepless wretchedness, 
haunted by terrifying dreams and gloomy foreboding of the day to 
come. He was up, however, before daybreak, and after an elo- 
quent harangue to his troops, with his crown upon his head led 
them to the battle. The armies met on Redmoor plain about 
three miles from Bosworth. Richard's army outnumbered 
Henry's two to one, and his men apparently were fast getting the 
better of their antagonists, when the Stanleys went over to the 
side of Henry and at once turned the balance in his 
Aiujustai favor. Richard saw that all was over, and flinging 

1435* 

himself into the press was cut down in an attempt to 
reach Richmond. The battered crown, which had been struck 
from his head by a sword cut, was found clinging to a hawthorn 
bush near by, and was placed by Sir William Stanley upon the 
head of the victor. Then the soldiers took up the shout and 
hailed Henry kiiig. 

So fell the last of the Plantagenets, the soldier kings of Eng- 
land, to give place to a new race who were to seek the ends of 
End of Plan- ^^'^^ government, the peace and prosperity of the peo- 
tqgenetera. ^\q^ j^ot through violence, but by the surer methods of 
statecraft. The national estates had passed almost impercep- 



END OF PLANTAGENET ERA 493 

tibly into the national parliament; but the long struggle for 
parliamentary rights had so weakened and undermined the 
strength of the crown, that it was no longer able to control its 
great subjects, but had become the helpless instrument of their 
quarrels, used first by one faction and then by the other, in order 
to give to their wholesale butcheries and confiscations the cloak of 
law. In time, however, the strength of the nobility was wasted, 
and then the great middle class was left to assert itself. Its 
strength had remained intact; it had taken little part in the wars 
of the barons and had been spared by both sides as a matter of 
policy; yet it was weary of the ceaseless anarchy and the blood- 
shedding. It longed for peace and was content to see the mon- 
archy grow strong again. To Edward IV. was presented the 
opportunity of ushering in this new day. The great merchant 
class were loyal to the House of York, not because of any interest 
in the mere abstraction of legal succession, but because they saw in 
it a pledge of better government and better personal security. But 
Edward had neither the moral seriousness nor the intellectual 
'grasp to comprehend his opportunity; he was too much of an 
autocrat by nature to care much for the sympathy of the nation ; 
he thought only of replacing the tyranny of the nobles by the 
personal rule of an independent king, and recklessly squandered 
the advantages of his position in his tyrannies and his immoral- 
ities. Eichard appreciated the full value of what his predecessor 
had thrown away ; but the crimes over which he had mounted to 
the throne, were even more fatal than Edward's indifference. 
He saw the new era; the light of the morning of national renais- 
sance and reformation was full upon his face, but the sins which 
he had committed prevented him from entering the promised land. 
This was reserved for his successor, when the monarchy, sup- 
ported by the loyalty of the nation and vindicated in the peace 
which it wrought, should enter upon a new era of strength and 
dignity. 




PART III— NATIONAL ENGLAND 

THE ERA OF NATIONAL AWAKENING 
BOOK II— RELIGIOUS REFORMATION 

FROM 1485 TO 1603 



CHAPTER I 



THE RESTORATION OF THE MOIS^ARCHY 

HENRY VII., US5-M)9 



THE YOUNGER BRANCH OF THE 
NEVILLES 

Richard. Earl of Salisbury, 
killed at Wakefield, 1400 



Richard, Earl of 
Warwick, the 
"Kins-Maker," 
killed at Bar- 
net, 1471 
I 



! , I 

John, George, 

Lord Men- Archbishop 
tagne, killed of York 
at'Towton, 
1461 



Isabella = George, 

Duke of Clar- 
ence, d. in the 
Tower, 1478 



Anne, 
??i. Richard III. 
killed at Bos- 
worth, 1485 



Edward Plan- 
tagenet, Earl 
of Warwick, 
ex. 1499 



Margaret, 
Countess of 
Salisbury, 
ex. 1541 



Edward, 
d. 1484 



THE DE LA POLES 

William, wealthy merchant of Kingston, 

I founder of family in time of Ed- 

I ward III. 
Michael, made earl of Suffolk in 1383, d. 

1 in exile at Paris. 1388. 
Micliael, 2d earl of Suffolk, d. at Har- 

I fleur, 1415. • 



William, = Alice, 
grand- 
daughter 



Michael, 
3d earl of 4th earl 

Suffolk. ((. at of Suffolk. 
Agincourt, 1415 1448. 1st of Chaucer 
duke of 
Suffolk, 
murdered 
1450 I 

John. = Elizabeth, 
2d duke I sister of 
of Suffolk, Edward 
d. 1491 I IV. 



John, Earl of 
Lincoln, killed 
at Stoke, 1487 



Edmimd, 
d. 1513 



I 
Ricliard, 
killed at 
Pavia, 1535, 
m. Mar- 
garet of 
Salisbury 



Henry, Lord Montague, 
ex. 1539 



Reginald, 
Archbishop of 
Canterbury, d. 1558 



Geoffrey 



The fifteenth century compared with the fourteenth had been 
a century of great material prosperity. A fortunate succession of 
favorable seasons had brought a corresponding succession of abun- 
dant harvests; the plague had ceased its ravages and the French 

494 



PKOSPERITY OF FIFTEENTH CENTURY 495 

war had run its course. The civil wars of the later period had 
•hardly interfered with the non-military population; the towns had 

been spared, and the slaughter on the battlefield had 
Prosperity of for the niost part been confined to the nobles and their 
fmiw^vT^^^ retainers. In the long era of qiiiet "which followed, 

under the beneficent influence of lighter taxation, 
abundant food, steady prices, and good wages, the population had 
recovered its losses, and at the close of the century exceeded possi- 
bly by twenty-five per cent the population of the England of 
Richard 11.^ 

Commerce was particularly vigorous and active ; a fact attested 
by a long series of commercial treaties which extend through the 

whole century, by which English traders sought to 
English secure markets not only in the cities of their neighbors 

commerce m «' ° 

^centuri^^^^^^' ^.cross the Channel, but also in the Hanse towns of the 
Baltic, in Castile and Portugal, and even in distant 
Florence. The materials of this trade were "wool, wheat, lead, 
tin, honey, hides, saddlery, hardware, and even guns." The return 
trade brought wine from Gascony, wine and sugar from Greece, 
paper from Venice and Florence, silks and stuffs of various hues 
and kinds, turquoises and rubies, from the Orient, furs and strong, 
coarse serges and friezes from Ireland, while even distant Iceland 
poured its stock-fish, eiderdown, and brimstone into Bristol. The 
dockyards of the east and south were called into unwonted activ- 
ity; shipbuilding flourished, and the keeping up of a fleet became 
once more the accepted policy of English kings. For much of 
the time the government had been bankrupt and its tenure uncer- 
tain, to say nothing of the presence of actual civil war; Henry V., 
Henry VI., and Edward IV. had successively debased the coinage, 
and yet in spite of these influences, merchant and artisan had con- 
tinued to prosper. The seas were comparatively safe. The 

^ At the close of the eleventh century the population of England was 
inckided in about 300, 000 families, representing possibly 2,000, 000 souls. At 
the close of the fifteenth century the population liad advanced to 4, 200,000. 
Allowing for the inroads of the Black Death and the Hundred Years' War, 
it is fair to suppose that at least one-half of this increase was due to the 
favorable conditions \v hich prevailed during the fifteenth century. 



496 THE RESTORATION OF THE MONARCHY [hknbyVU. 

merchants left the government pretty much to the nobles and 
neither bothered themselves nor imperiled their interests by mix- 
ing up their ventures with affairs of state, while the thrifty con- 
dition of the craft-gilds, who maintained the quality of English 
goods and the regularity of the output of English shojDs, enabled 
them to secure a firm hold upon the markets of Europe. 

Architecture also felt the new life, although it is indicative of 

the direction in which the currents were tending, that its 

triumphs lay not so much in the erection of great pub- 

ArcMtecture. \[q buildings as in the construction of better and more 

The "Per- o 

if/te""^"'^ commodious dwellings for the people. Its spirit was 
practical, materialistic; its right angles and upright 
lines, its flat arches, square-headed windows and broad window- 
lights, its square-paneled walling and elaborate ceilings, its low 
pitched roofs and towering pinnacles, features of the so-called jjer- 
pendicular style, are in marked contrast with the lofty pointed 
arches, flying buttresses and vast roof spaces of the era which had 
passed. 

The change in the style of architectnre was not more marked 

than the changes in the style of dress, particularly of the middle 

classes who v/ere developing other tastes in keeping 

Drefis, with their improved dwellings; the robes of churchmen 

armor, etc. J- . 

alone remained as they had been in the thirteenth cen- 
tury, — emblem of the unerring, changeless orthodoxy of the wearer. 
Armor also had changed to keep pace with the improvements in 
offensive warfare which had followed the introduction of gun- 
powder. It had become so heavy, so elaborate, and so cumbersome 
that it was rapidly approaching the limit when it would be no 
longer possible for the knight to move, much less fight to advan- 
tage under the increasing weight of steel. It was no unusual 
occurrence for "ye brave knight," in the heat and dust and press 
of battle, to die without mark of cut or thrust, ignobly smothered 
under his weight of armor. On the other hand gunpowder was 
coming rapidly into use, especially on the continent. The Ger- 
mans on the Ehine developed a "light, well-bored hand-gun,' a 
weapon which was quite a favorite with Charles cf Burgundy, 
who sent 300 of his "hand-gnu men" to accompany Edward IV. 



INTELLECTUAL LIFE OP CENTURY 497 

in his descent at Ravenspur in 1471. In England, however, the 
long bow, the traditional national weapon which had won Crecy 
and Poitiers, still maintained its popularity and prevented the 
general introduction of_ hand fire-arms ; yet heavy ordnance had 
been adopted very early, and figured in all the important sieges of 
the period, particularly at Harfleur in 1415, when the three great 
guns of Henry V., "the London," "the Messagere," and the 
"King's Daughter," kept up such a continuous cannonade for 
thirty days, that the population at last pronounced it "unen- 
durable" and were glad to capitulate. The eighteen-foot pike, 
which the Swiss had used to such advantage against the chivalry 
of Austria, had also become a favorite with the infantry. The 
importance of drill and training in the use of arms was generally 
recognized, thus making the military life a distinct profession, 
and to that extent robbing the old feudal nobility of their 
occupation. 

The intellectual life of England had remained at a low ebb until 
the close of the century. The renaissance was in full tide in Italy, 

but English ears were so filled with the din of political 
Theintei- strife or Commercial rivalries, that little heed was paid 
of the age. to the quiet-voiced scholar, bent upon the lore of a 

forgotten world. Within the seclusion of the uni- 
versities where the atmosphere was freest from the distracting 
influences of the day, and where much might have been accom- 
plished for pure learning, the restrictions which had been placed 
upon discussion since the days of Lollardism, had discouraged 
research and stifled thought. So keen was the scent of the 
authorities for heresy, that even those who took up the pen to 
defend the church, as Bishop Peacock in 1459, were not always 
happy in satisfying the ultraconservatism of their party and got 
into sore trouble for their pains. The wise, therefore, did not 
try to write, and left disputation to the half informed enthusiast. 
Men were bent upon other things, more engrossing than parch- 
ment scroll or panel ; even those who wrote books, as the private 
historiographers of the nobles, wrote to please a very limited 
constituency rather than to give utterance to great thoughts. 
Volumes of correspondence, as the famous Paston letters, stato 



498 THE RESTORATION OF THE MONARCHY [hknry vil. 

papers, chronicles, diaries, account books, have survived, but, 
valuable as they are for the purposes of the historian, they are 
hardly literature. There was poetry, and much of it; weak 
imitations of Chaucer, imitations also of the French ballads, 
and the popular miracle plays, or mysteries, but, although some 
writers, as Robert Henryson, still labored quite in the old spirit 
of Chaucer, in general "the quality of the verse was poor and the 
thought lifeless." 

The new inspiration which the century was to contribute to 
bookmaking was to come, not from the closet of poet or historian 

or philosopher, but from the shop of the printer. 
En^iand^^ Block printing had been known in England as early as 

1350; but in the reign of Edward IV., William Caxton, 
an Englishman who had formerly settled in Bruges, introduced 
the new art of printing by movable type. He had already printed 
abroad the Game and Play of Cliess; but at Westminster, where 
under the special patronage of Edward IV., he set up his press, he 
attempted far more ambitious tasks: C]iaucer''s Woi'lcs^ i\iQ Morte 
cVArtlmi- of Sir Thomas Malory, the Polyclironicon of Higden, a 
history of England to which Caxton made his own additions, 
bringing the work down to date, the Sayings of tlie Philosophers, 
translated by Lord Anthony Elvers, and the story of Reynard 
the Fox. It is interesting to note that among Caxton's patrons 
at this era were Tiptoft, the earl of Worcester, the same who won 
the unpleasant nickname of "the butcher" by the scientific way 
in which he conducted the executions of 14T0, and Eichard of 
Gloucester himself. Caxton and his helpers did much to influence 
the present form of the English language by fixing upon the mid- 
land dialect as the standard book English; he also used the spelling 
and inflections of the late thirteenth and early foarteenth cen- 
turies, thus preserving many survivals of the old inflected 
Anglo-Saxon, as the final nmte e, and by reason of the over slavish 
imitation of bookmakers since, committing the language to many 
of the eccentricities, which make the spelling of present-day 
English so hard to acquire. 

All in all the age was a great age, although it abounded in 
deep shadows. Its springs were commercial rather than spiritual 



THE GREATER ERA AT HAND 499 

or intellectual, and like every commercial age it was also material- 
istic. Its materialism, moreover, had invaded the high places of 
state and church ; it had poisoned the motives of king 
thea^e^ and noble, and had turned politics into a bloody scram- 
ble for plunder; it had obscured the vision of the 
people and weakened their grasp upon the supreme principles of 
righteousness and liberty; it had converted bishops and abbots 
into thrifty landlords, more anxious to save sheep than to save 
souls; to extend their temporal powers than to develop the 
Christian graces among their people. The influence of the 
church had declined correspondingly, and a spirit of irreligion 
pervaded all classes. Yet if faith in God were less active, a belief 
in the devil and his works was never so vigorous ; the existence 
of witchcraft and the general potency of the black art were com- 
monly accepted, and figured in more than one great state trial of 
the century/ 

At the opening of Henry VII. 's reign, however, all conditions 
were prophetic of a greater era at hand. The conditions of the 
older political life were passing away. The old theories 
demcS^'^^^ of the state which had served to hold the medieval 
society together, strange mingling of ideas drawn in 
part from the ancient Jewish theocracy, in part from the civil law, 
and in part from feudalism, were steadily yielding to new 
conceptions of the relations of king and nation.^ New ele- 
ments, also, had been thrust into the body politic as a result 
of the decline of villainage and the development of the 
free yeomanry. The wealth of the nation was no longer 
confined to the manors of the great lords, but was gravitat- 
ing to the cities and was fully represented in the growing 
importance of the merchant class. The interests of the people, 
also, were turning them less to politics and more to trade. 
The traditions of recent baronial usurpation, moreover, had com- 
pletely displaced the more ancient traditions of royal encroach- 

' For the trial of Joan of Arc, see Colby Selections, j)p. 113-117. For 
case of Eleanor Cobliam, see Green H. E. P., I, 560, 561. 

^ For summary of theories of Fortescue, the venerable jurist of Henry 
VI. and Edward IV., see Stubbs C H., vol. Ill, pp. 347-253. 



500 THE KESTORATION OF THE MONARCHY [henry VU. 

ment upon the constitution. Englishmen feared civil strife more 
than all other evils and were willing to concede almost any powers 
to the crown, if only they might secure the peace for which they 
longed. The demand of the hour, therefore, was for protection 
against the lawlessness of subjects rather than against the possi- 
ble encroachments of the crown ; for a crowned constable to appre- 
hend and punish influential criminals, rather than for pugnacious 
parliaments; for new markets rather than for foreign conquests; 
for the substantial favors of great commercial treaties rather than 
the enforcement of the claims of the English crown over France. 
The new king in appearance was spare ; his face was intellec- 
tual, secretive, cold and severe, suggesting the ascetic. In diplo- 
macy he was cunning, patient, farsighted, and prac- 
Characterof tical. He had proved himself no mean soldier; yet like 
all the great kings of England, he was not fond of war. 
He was a miser not because he loved gold, but by policy; he saw 
that money was the first condition of a strong government. To 
him a penny saved was far more satisfactory than a penny coaxed 
from a refractory parliament. Hence his habits were frugal, and 
liis court presented but a shabby appearance to those who remem- 
bered the days of the gay, the magnificent, the voluptuous Edward. 
The policy which Henry adopted at the beginning of his reign 
and persistently followed out, is itself the best illustration of the 
character of the man. He proposed to win the hered- 

TM Tudor [^^yv foes of his house by generous treatment, yet to 
policy. -^ •' ° '' 

hold them with a strong hand ; to strengthen the royal 
authority by reducing the power of the nobles and courting the 
sympathy of the people, at the same time making his administra- 
tion independent of the whims of parliament by a business-like 
management of the public treasury. To carry out this policy he 
must eschew war; yet he did not propose for that reason to allow 
England's prestige to suffer abroad; he would win his share in the 
perpetual scramble of continental politicians by the gentler and less 
expensive method of matrimonial alliance. This policy Henry 
followed through his own reign and transmitted to his successors, 
and although adopted by no one of them in full, although varied 
by each to meet the ever shifting needs of national or foreign 



1485, I486] LAMBERT SIMi^"EL 501 

politics, in its essential features, it remained the characteristic 
Tndor policy. 

Henry called his first parliament together November 7, 1485. 
He informed them that he held the crown "by just right of inher- 
itance and by the judgment of God." They accepted 
Hcnry'sflrst j^jg statement of fact, and, without raising the question 

parliament, ' ' t> "i 

Niwemherr, ^f right, declared "that the inheritance of the crown 
of England and France be, rest, remain and abide in 
the person of our sovereign lord. King Henry VII., and in the 
heirs of his body." They also declared the late King Eichard an 
usurper, his followers traitors, and then, thinking they had 
sufficiently vindicated the position of Henry, extended a general 
pardon to the survivors. It was a politic act and did much to 
inspire confidence. Then they still further voiced the earnest 
desire of the nation for peace by humbly petitioning the king to 
"deign to marry the Lady Elizabeth York," the daughter of 
Edward IV. Henry consented, and the marriage was set for 
January 18, 1486. Thus at last the claims of the two lines of 
York and Lancaster were merged in the one House of Tudor. 

The new monarchy was hardly established before its strength 

was put to the test by a series of risings due to the restlessness of 

the deposed Yorkists. In 1486 Lord Lovel, a York- 

YorMst ris- . ^ . , , . . , 

ings. Lovel, shire nobleman, raised the people of Yorkshire in the 
Yorkist interest. But the middle class everywhere 

hurried to the king's assistance. A "marvelous great number of 

esquires, gentlemen, and yeomen" gathered about Henry, and 

Lovel and his insurgents were speedily routed. 

The same year a second attempt was set on foot in Ireland. 

The great nobles of the Geraldine line took up Lambert Simnel, 
the son of an Oxford tradesman, and proclaimed him 

Simnel, 11S6- to be "Edward Plantagenet, " Earl of Warwick, the 

1487. 

son of Duke Clarence and Isabelle Neville, although the 
real Edward was at the time safe in Henry's keeping in the Tower. 
It seems strange that men should have believed Simnel's story; 
but it must be remembered that news spread slowly, and that 
it was very difficult to set the popular mind right when once 
misled. The people, moreover, were ignorant and credulous, and 



502 THE RESTORATIOlsr OF THE MONARCHY [henkt VII. 

delighted in the marvelous and the improbable. Margaret of 
Burgundy, Edward IV. 's sister, acknowledged Simnel as her 
nephew, while John de la Pole, the earl of Lincoln, son of a 
second sister, openly Joined Simnel, together with Lovel who 
had fled to Flanders after his previous failure. The expedition, 
composed of a motley crowd of soldiers and adventurers, Gfermans, 
Flemings, and Irish, set sail from Dublin in the early summer of 
1487, and soon made a landing in Lancashire. In June Henry 
met them at Stoke; Lovel and Lincoln were slain; but Simnel 
was captured and set to work as a turnspit in the royal kitchen. 
He was not worth the hanging. 

The rising bore immediate fruit in the revival of the old custom 
of calling together members of the king's council as a court of 

special criminal judicature in cases which the ordinary 
The Court of courts could not reach. Henry's primary object was to 
her, 1487"^' P^it a stop to the long established abuses of livery of 

company, which made such risings as those of Lovel 
and Simnel possible. Parliaments had frequently petitioned 
against the evil and kings had promulgated laws in response, but 
in the weakness of the ordinary courts offenders had gone 
"unwhipped of justice;" the poor had been oppressed; the courts 
despised, and the king defied. The evil, therefore, lay not in the 
law, but in the nerveless arm which wielded the law. What was 
needed was a court which would be beyond private control, and not 
subject to packing or intimidation ; and to meet this need a special 
committee of the king's council, composed of the chancellor, the 
treasurer, the keeper of the privy seal, a bishop, and a lord of the 
council, to which were added the two chief justices, was empow- 
ered by special act of parliament to deal with "such offenses as 
livery and maintenance, jury packing, incitement to riot," and, in 
general, with all offenses where the ordinary courts failed to give 
justice. Cases of serious complaint, where no redress was offered 
in the ordinary courts, had frequently been addressed to the king 
in council, and such matters were commonly transacted in the 
room in the royal palace known as the Star Chamber where the 
council ordinarily held its business sittings. What was new, there- 
fore, AVfis not a court of Star Chamber, but the creation of a special 



1487] THE COURT OF STAR CHAMBER 503 

committee of the council, strengthened by the addition of the two 
royal judges and empowered to deal with particular classes of 
offenders.^ Henceforth when a great noble violated the laws, the 
king's officers seized him, brought him to Westminster, and 
presented him to the Court of Star Chamber where he was tried 
and condemned without jury and by secret session, and sometimes 
it might be even without a hearing. Henry's old friend, the earl 
of Oxford, was among the first to suffer under the new law ; he was 
fined £10,000.' 

Another act no less conducive to the permanence of the present 

peace prescribed that the service of a de facto king should not be 

construed as high treason by act of parliament or any 

De. Facto proccss of law. A parliament could not bind its suc- 

Statute, 1495. i ^ 

cessors, and yet the effect of the law was to remove an 
incentive to joining Yorkists' plots. Another law, also servicea- 
ble to the same end, prescribed that if a decision in case of a con- 
fiscated estate had been once given and a fine levied with proclama- 
tion in a. public court of justice, then after five years no further 
claims could be made. 

While Henry was thus laying anew the foundations of order at 
home, the managers of the young French sovereign, Charles 

VIII. had been steadily reducing the remaining feu- 
Warwtth datories of the French allegiance and consolidating the 

France over "= ° 

Brittany, strength of the crown. Henry was not blind to the 

1492. ° "^ 

significance of these steps ; England was deeply inter- 
ested, and when in 1490 the advance of the French arms promised 
the speedy reduction of Brittany, the English saw themselves 
threatened not only with the loss of an old and useful ally but 
also with the destruction of their trade with the Bretons, for the 
lords of Brittany had given special privileges to English merchants. 
Henry's merchants, therefore, were eager to prevent the absorption 
of Brittany by the French crown even at the expense of war. 
Henry, however, felt that his position at home was by no means 

iSee Prothero, Select Statutes, pp. xcviii-cvii. For some novel and 
interesting facts concerning this famous court, see also Miss Scofield's 
Study of the Court of Star Chamber. 

^For the well-known story, see Green II, p. 70. 



504 THE RESTORATION OF THE MONARCHY [henry vii. 

SO secure, that he could afford to plunge into war with the now 
powerful French monarchy. Yet the nation insisted and 
through parliament virtually forced the king to interfere. 
Still Henry entered into the war with anything but a whole 
heart, and sent over an army of only 6,000 men, entirely 
inadequate to hold the duchy. The English people were not 
satisfied; the clamor for war increased, and in October 1492 
Henry invaded France in person. He only pretended to make 
war, however, and was content to allow Charles to buy him off, 
as Louis XI. had once bought off Edward IV. This way of 

making "war pay at both ends," for parliament had 
Treaty of already voted enormous subsidies, peculiarly appealed to 
Tucfugt', 1492. Henry's thrifty nature. The nation was chagrined 

and angry, but had to accept the result. 
One reason why Henry had hesitated to plunge into a foreign 
war was the fear that such a war would offer a new opportunity 

for the Yorkists to make trouble, and so it turned out. 
PerMn Another pretender was found the moment the king had 

become involved in a foreign campaign. This new 
claimant was the famous Perkin Warbeck, who asserted that he 
was Eichard of York, the younger of the two princes who were 
sujiposed to have been murdered in the Tower in 1483. As in the 
case of Simnel, Margaret of Burgundy accepted this pretender also 
as her nephew, and rendered him all possible assistance; while the 
king of France welcomed him in hope of gaining some new advan- 
tage over his enemy. Warbeck was a Fleming of Tournay, hand- 
some, fascinating, well educated, of kingly bearing and noble 
manners, and so well tutored in his part that some readily believed 
in him. He appeared first in Ireland some time in 1492, where 
he was greeted by the Irish, and acknowledged by the deputy of 
the king, the earl of Kildare. From Ireland he passed to France, 
and in 1493 appeared at the court of Margaret. 

The fact that two pretenders could so readily get the support 
of the representative of Henry in Ireland, shows how little control 
he had in this part of his realms, and how little respect the earl of 
Kildare had for his chief. Henry determined therefore to replace 
the turbulent earl of Kildare by a more responsible deputy. The 



1494, 1495] POYNINGS'S LAW 505 

man whom he selected was Sir Edward Poynings, his old compan- 
ion in exile, as devoted to his interests as he was able and deter- 
mined. Poynings began his work by getting possession 
Ireland. of the Pale. He then compelled the Irish parliament to 
Law"i4yL pass a series of acts, by which it was declared: Jirst that 
the consent of the English king and council was neces- 
sary to the summoning of an Irish parliament ; second, that all 
bills considered by the Irish parliament must first be considered 
by the English parliament; and third, that the recent laws of the 
English parliament were binding upon Ireland. Here was a fit- 
ting close of that century and a half of English legislation for 
Ireland which began with the Statute of Kilkenny of 1367, "which 
made it high treason for an English settler to adopt Irish customs, 
to speak the Irish tongue, or to marry an Irish woman;" which 
in 1465 made it lawful for a freeman to kill a thief on sight, or 
even one whom he suspected of being a thief; and which now in 
1494 deprived the Irish parliament of all power to make its own 
laws. This action effectually robbed Warbeck of the chance of 
further assistance from Ireland. 

In the meantime Henry's agents had also ferreted out a number 
of men at home, who were charged with being in sympathy with 
Warbeck and engaged in securing for him a secret fol- 
DeathofSir lowing in England. At the head of these suspects was 
stanUy,u95. Sir William Stanley, his chamberlain, the man who had 
made Henry's success at Bosworth possible, and who 
had crowned him on the field of battle. Like Warwick, the King:- 
Maker, Stanley also had come to lament his successful treason, 
and was now plotting to undo his work. By order of Henry he 
was seized, tried, and executed. Whether he were guilty, or not, 
will probably always remain a question; but the summary pro- 
ceedings, the dignity and wide influence of the victim, were a 
warning to the politicians, and effectually intimidated the secret 
adherents of Warbeck in England. 

After purging his own court Henry determined to force the 
Flemings to expel his enemy. The task was not difficult; for 
although Margaret persisted in befriending her spurious nephew, 
Henry knew that the policy of Flanders was determined in the 



500 THE RESTOEATIO]S^ OF THE MONARCHY [henby VII. 

long run by the burghers. Upon the burghers, therefore, he 

brought his displeasure to bear, proclaiming an embargo upon 

all goods shipped to England from the Flemish ports. 

Embargo » r ,, ^ t « • , . -r. 

uponFiemisii As in the case 01 the American embargo asrainst Enar- 
trcidc o o o 

lish goods in the early part of the nineteenth century, 

the people enforcing the act suffered quite as much as those against 
whom the act was directed. In Henry's case, however, the pres- 
sure upon the Flemish burghers was sufficient to raise such an out- 
cry that Margaret was compelled to let Warbeck go; and Duke 
Philip, Margaret's grandson, secured for his compliance a com- 
mercial treaty with England known as the Magnus Intercursus^ 
which guaranteed freedom of trade between England 

The MagnilS ° p -^^^ • i • - -, o in 

intercursus, and a number of i^lemish cities and was of great benefit 

1496, 

to both countries. The success of Henry's embargo 
reveals the gi'owing influence of commerce and the commercial 
classes in shaping the foreign policy of European nations. 

From Flanders Warbeck attempted to make a descent on the 
coast of Kent, but was easily beaten off, and finally by way of 

Ireland reached Scotland. James IV. gave the adven- 
Scotiand, turer a generous welcome, acknowledged him as Edward 

1496. 7 o 

IV. 's son, and found a wife for him in his own kins- 
woman Catharine Gordon. He even went so far as to cross the 
border with his protege, and begin the harrying of the Northum- 
brian peasants; but Warbeck sickened of this kind of work and 
returned to Scotland in disgust. Then James grew weary of his 
high-toned guest who took no pleasure in making war on simple 
peasant folk and after two years saw him and his wife leave the 
kingdom without regret. 

The threat of northern invasion had roused parliament to 
unusual effort. It granted the king the enormous subsidy of 

£120,000; and also empowered him to borrow an addi- 

The rising of . „., ., , • • , 

the Cornish tioual sum of £40,000. When, however, the ministers 
attempted to collect the money, there was great dissat- 
isfaction throughout England, where resistance to taxation was 
coming to be almost a national tradition. In Cornwall the discon- 
tent expressed itself in armed revolt ; a dangerous band of insur- 
gents began the usual march upon London and were not stopped 



1497-1499] END OF WARBECK'S CAREER 507 

uutil they reached Blackheath. The leaders, among whom was 
Lord Audley, were executed, but the comuion people were spared. 
Warbeck, who had found little sympathy in Ireland, landed 
in Cornwall some three months after Blackheath, and taking 
The end of advantage of the continued dissatisfaction of the peo- 
warbecrs p]g encouraged them once more to take up arms. He 

career, 1497- r ^ b ^ r 

^^^^- attacked Exeter but was driven off by the earl of 

Devonshire, and retired to Taunton. Here his courage forsook 
him altogether and he fled to sanctuary at Beaulieu in the New 
Forest. He was taken and brought before Henry at Exeter and 
humbly confessed all the pitiable fraud. Henry sent him to the 
Tower and for a time treated him fairly well; but an unsuccess- 
ful attempt to escape in which he tried to take with him Edward 
Plantagenet, the genuine earl of Warwick, brought both the unfor- 
tunate young men to the block. The execution of Warwick was 
hardly Justifiable; the poor young man had been shut up in the 
Tower since he was a child of ten, and had never done harm to 
any one. His death removed the last Yorkist of the male line. 

The creation of the Court of Star Chamber was only one of 
many indications of the despotic tendency of Henry's administra- 
tion. Certain very definite checks upon the royal 
ism of Henry authority had been clearly recognized both in custom and 
in formal law before the end of the fifteenth century. 
These checks may be thus enumerated: 1. A grant of parliament 
was in all cases necessary to legal taxation; 2. The king might 
promulgate no new law without the assent of parliament; 3. He 
might imprison no subject without legal warrant and every arrest 
must also be followed by speedy trial ; 4. Officers and servants of 
the crown were liable for every violation of the rights of subjects ; 
the command of a superior, even of the king, might not be 
advanced in defense; 5. The Commons had the right to impeach 
any of the king's ministers for malfeasance or other misconduct.^ 
Theoretically, therefore, the liberties of the nation were secure, 
but in the application of law in individual cases there was still wide 
opportunity for abuse. Unfortunately also the conditions under 
which Henry held the crown, frequently justified such evasions 

^Cf. Haliam, Constitutional Hist, of England, ed. 1880, I, p. 18. 



508 THE RESTORATION OF THE MONARCHY [hen-ry vii. 

in the interests of peace and order. Thus in time a series of 
precedents were gradually established, which practically annulled 
the law of liberty, just when the subject most needed its protec- 
tion. Parliament, moreover, not only regarded such usurpations 
with favor, but supported the king in measures which a hundred 
years before would have called the nation to arms. This is not 
to be explained simply by the weakness of parliament, or by the 
fact that the nobles no longer had within their grasp the means 
of forcing the demands of parliament upon the king, but rather 
by the fact that Henry VII. and his successor really represented 
the policy of the great body of yeomanry and gentry who controlled 
the parliaments of the sixteenth century. 

It was in keeping with this same tendency that towards the 
end of his reign Henry dispensed with the services of parliament 

altogether. The outcry which had been raised against 
The "Benevo- '^ •' ^ . . . ° 

iences"of the grants of 1497, had proved to him that even for 
HennJ yil- 1 . . » , . -, . . •, -, , 

the raising of subsidies parliament was useless, and that 

its authority was not sufficient to outweigh the increasing opposi- 
tion of the nation to taxation. Edward IV. 's method of raising 
money by benevolences was far more convenient. Henry found it 
useful, however, in levying his benevolences to respect the sem- 
blance of law, sometimes by securing the sanction of a council of 
notables summoned for this purpose, and sometimes by securing 
an authorization by parliament. For the most part his rich sub- 
jects responded without protest, accepting the burden as a sort of 
price which they were paying for the much desired peace and for 
protection against other and worse kinds of spoliation. 

In other ways also Henry's agents contrived not only to replen- 
ish his treasury as he needed funds but to accumnlate a hoard 

which at his death was estimated at £1,800,000. At 
thchavom ^^^^ beginning of his reign confiscations were numerous, 
%equer''^' ^^^^ when these began to fail, the two barons of the 

Exchequer, Empson and Dudley, proposed to hold all 
those who had wittingly or unwittingly infringed upon ancient 
feudal rights of the crown, customs most of them obsolete, 
and fine the offenders. Fines were also levied without mercy 
upon all criminals and rebels. Even the Cornishmen, whose 



1494] THE LEAGUE AGAINST FKAX-CE 509 

poverty was proverbial, were compelled to pay each his shilling- 
fine in order to secure a pardon after the rising of 1497. Offend- 
ers who were so unhappy as to be conspicuous for their wealth, 
were fined proportionately. 

In the later years of Henry the nations of western Europe 
began the long struggle to set bounds to the ambition of French 

kings. The recent rapid advance of France had roused 
alliances of the apprehension and jealousy of her neighbors, and 

when in 1494 the visionary Charles VIII. entered upon 
his famous Italian campaign for the purpose of overthrowing the 
Aragonese princes of Naples in the interest of his own shadowy 
claims to the Neapolitan crown, his first startling successes led at 
once to a formal counter-league of the western powers, in which 
Ferdinand of Spain^ and the Hapsburg emperor, Maximilian, 
bore a leading part. England was hardly concerned in the issue, 
for it really mattered little to her who controlled Italy or how it 
was ultimately to be divided. But English statesmen did not 
yet comprehend the advantages of England's insular position, 
or the wisdom of holding aloof from continental entangle- 
ments, in which she had no real interest; to be without an 
alliance was regarded as a position of great weakness, and hence 
Henry VII. sought for a place in the new continental system. 
That this place should be by the side of Hapsburg and Spain was 
natural. The marriage of Mary of Burgundy and Maximilian 

had made the princes of this powerful house heirs to 

1477. . . . , , 

the traditional friendships and enmities of Burgundy, 
and although the alliance of Charles the Rash with the Yorkists 
had led him to oppose the Lancastrians, as it had also led the 
French king to support Henry at first, the fact that the Yorkist- 
Lancastrian quarrel was now virtually settled and that Henry 
himself had recently broken with France, the fact that it was in 
every way important for Henry to maintain England's profitable 

pagon and Castile had been united under the joint sovereignty of 
FeHittand and Isabella in 1479. To this Ferdinand had recently added 
Granada by the expulsion of the Moors, 1482-1492. Navarre, the last of 
the four original Spanish kingdoms, was still independent in 1494. It was 
added by conquest in 1513. 



610 THE EESTOEATION OF THE MONARCHY [heney vil. 

commercial relations with Burgundy and that an alliance with 
Hapsburg would put a stop to Margaret's support of her spurious 
nephews and save Hetiry from further annoyance from pretenders 
such as Simnel and Warbeck, all together induced him to join the 
league as a kind of silent member. 

The friendly relations of Hapsburg, Spain, and England thus 

established in their first alliance against France, were to have the 

gravest results in shaping the future history of Europe, 

The (treat and of England in particular. In 1496 Juana of Ara- 

matrimonial »-r-\T 

aiiiaii(',s<,f gou the second daughter or I'ercnnand and Isabella, 
siHiin, E'n'u- was married to Philip, the duke of Bargundy, son of 

land, and n.^ . .,. -, ^t t ^, ^ • , 

Scotland. Maximilian and Mary. In 1501 Catharine, another 
daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, was married to 
Arthur, the eldest son of Henry VIL, and after Arthur's death 
the next year, she was pledged to Henry's second son, afterward 
Henry VIII. An attempt to detach from France her old tradi- 
tional ally, Scotland, also led in 1503 to the marriage of James IV. 
and Margaret, a daughter of Henry VII. Of these marriages 
the Hapsburg-Spanish marriage was to save the papal supremacy 
in southern Europe; but the English-Spanish marriage was to 
force the severance of England from the papal system; the Scotch- 
English marriage was to result in the final union of England and 
Scotland under a king of the Stuart line. At the time such 
results were farthest from the minds of the chief actors ; Henry 
thought only of securing the stability of his throne and the peace 
of his kingdom, and in these he succeeded. 

Henry died in 1509. He had done much for England; he had 
restored the monarchy; established peace; repressed the great 
nobles; and compelled all classes to obey the laws. He was not a 
great legislator; but he was a great peace-officer. From the point 
of view of the constitution his administration marks the beginning 
of a serious retrogression; he had little use for parliament, and 
greatly strengthened and enlarged the authority of the royal 
council as the chief instrument of government, making it neces- 
sary, in the next century, to fight over again the quarrel between 
king and parliament, shedding much blood and squandering much 
wealth in order to secure the privileges which the parliaments of 



EESULTS OF HENRY VII, 'S REIGX 



511 



Henry IV. and Henry V. had enjoyed. And yet just such an 
administration as Henry VII. gave his people was needed at the 
close of the fifteenth century to prepare England for the great 
role which she was to play in the sixteenth century. 



PROMINENT CHARACTERS OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 



KINGS OF ENGLAND. 

Henry IV., 1399-1413 
Henry V., 1413-1423 
Henry VI., 1433-1461, 

and 1470 1471 
Edward IV., 1461-1483 
Kiohard III., 1483-1485 
Henry VII., 1485-1509 



KINGS OF FRANCE. 

Charles VI., 1380- 

1433 
Charles VII., 1433- 

1461 
Louis XL, 

1483 
Charles VIIL, 1483- 

1498 
Louis XII., 1498- 

1515 



1461- 



EMPEBORS. 

Sigisniond, 1410- 

1438 
Frederick III., 

1440-1493 
Maximilian I., 1493- 

1519 



SOVEREIGNS OF 
SPAIN. (CAS- 
TILE AND ABA- 

GON). 

Ferdinand the 
"Catliolic," 1479- 
1516 

Isabella, Joint sov- 
ereign witli Fer- 
dinand, 1479-1504 



FAMOUS CHARACTERS NOT KINGS. 



John Huss, d. 1414 
Joan of Arc, d. 1431 
Gutenberg, d. 1468 

Richard of Warwick, the "King Maker," 
d. 1471 



Charles the "Rash." d. 1477 
Caxton, d. 1491 
Lorenzo de Medici, d. 1493 
Savonarola, rt. 1496 
Columbus, d. 1506 



CHAPTER II 

THE MONARCHY SUPREME. THE ADMINISTRATION OF WOLSET 

HENRY nil., 1509-1530 

ROYAL DESCENT OF THE STAFFOEDS 

Edmund Stafford — Anne, daughter of Thomas Duke of Gloucester, 
I 6th son of Edward III. 

Humphrey, Duke of Buckingham, killed 
I at Northampton, 1460 

Humphrey, Earl of Stafford = Margaret, daughter of Edmund, 
killed at St. Albans, 1455 I Duke of Somerset who was kiUed 
at St Albans, 1455 

Henry, Duke of Buckingham, executed by 
I Richard III., 1483 

Edward, Duke of Buckingham, e.xecuted 
I by Henry VIIL, 1531 

Henry, Lord Stafford, d. 1563 

The accession of Henry YIII. was hailed by all classes with 
confident enthnsiasm. No king had presented himself to the 

nation with so clear a title since the accession of Eich- 
nSm'vii^ ^^*-^ ^^' "' nisrchants and petty artisans, great nobles and 

gentry, freeholders and copyholders, felt that in this 
York-Lancastrian king the peace which Henry VII. had given 
was finally and definitely secured. The new king, moreover, pos- 
sessed in himself many elements which commended him to his 
people. He was a fine youth of eighteen, tall, broad-shouldered, 
handsome in form and feature, a champion with lance or long 
bow. In manners he was courteous, kindly, and affable, and with- 
out any suggestion of the cautious thrift of his father. In intel- 
lectual ability and training he was far superior to the average king 
of his day; he was learned in history and theology; versed in lit- 
erature, and skilled in language and music. The men of the new 
learning regarded him as one of themselves, and in him fondly 
looked for the realization of their ideals. But beneath this gloss of 
refinement and culture, back of the debonaire youth, the universal 
favorite of noble and simple, there lay another nature of which 

512 



CHAEACTEK OF HENRY VIlL 5l3 

Henry himself possibly was not conscious iu those days when his 
will had not yet been crossed, or his vanity had not yet fed on the 
sweets of unlimited power. "If a lion know his strength," said 
Sir Thomas More, who knew the real king better than the king 
knew himself, "hard were it for any man to rule him. " When 
the unhappy Wolsey lay dying in 1530, long after men had dis- 
covered the true nature of their Nero, he said of Henry: "He is 
a prince of royal courage and hath a princely heart, and rather 
than he will miss or want part of his appetite, he will hazard the 
loss of one half of his kingdom." He was as selfish, as fond of 
display, as willful as Edward IV; he could be as ruthlessly cruel. 
Yet he knew nothing of Edward's indolence; he loved work, and 
displayed the same resistless energy, the same ruthless will, in 
pursuing the objects of state as the less worthy purposes of pleasure. 
Henry recpgnized few obligations to those who served him. 
He was "a good king" but a hard master. He knew men, read 

shrewdly the character of those who surrounded him, 
attitude 
towards Ms and, with much of Louis XI. 's cynicism, gave them little 

credit for devotion or purity of motive. They were 
his tools, honored in the using, but when broken and worthless 
to be thrown away. Almost his first act was to cause the arrest 
of Empson and Dudley, his father's hated barons of the Exche- 
quer, whose only crime had been an over-faithful service of the 
crown; it was an ominous beginning of a reign to be proverbially 
disastrous to great ministers. 

In his domestic policy, Henry contemplated no serious depar- 
ture from his father's plans. He kept the great nobles out of 
office, and surrounded the throne with a new nobility, 
policy i}f which he himself raised from the middle class. He 
made the church more than ever dependent upon the 
royal will. 

During the reign of Henry VII. the renaissance was in full tide 

in Italy, but it had been late in reaching England. The new 

kin 2: beffan at once to show favor to the devotees of the 

Henry VIII. o o 

and the new' new learning; he was charmed with the conversation 

of men like More and Colet; he was flattered to be 

counted one of their number, and no doubt thought that he was 



514 THE MONARCHY StJPREME [henky vill. 

in sympathy with their ideals. He protected Colet, and cordially 
welcomed to England Erasmus, the learned scholar of Kotterdam. 
He encouraged the founding of grammar schools and colleges, and 
supported Wolsey in his plan of appropriating the wealth of 
decayed monasteries to securing better facilities for educating the 
clergy. 

When Henry began his reign, his advisers regarded it of the 
utmost importance to continue the foreign policy of the first 
Tudor. In 1503 a special dispensation of Julius 11. 
Theforeign had authorized the marriage of Henry with Catharine 
Henry Viii. o_f Aragon, the widow of his brother Arthur, and the 
Jwne7,'i509. union had been duly celebrated soon after the death 
of Henry VII. to the great delight of the people, 
who saw in it a visible pledge of Henry's purpose to continue 
his father's policy. If, however, they thought that their ener- 
getic young sovereign would be content to accept the elder 
Henry's passive but safe policy of silent partnership with Spain 
and Hapsburg they soon found that they were seriously mistaken. 
The anti-French league which had been organized upon the appear- 
ance of the French in Italy in 1494:, had degenerated 

The Holy jj^f^Q ^ mere scramble of the great powers over the par- 
League, loll. b i r 

tition of Italy, in which Ferdinand had not scrupled to 
make a secret league with Louis ^11., Charles VIII. 's successor, in 
order to get the lion's share of the spoil. J5ut the successes of the 
French had again alarmed Ferdinand and his ally. Pope Julius II., 
so that in 1511 a new league was formed, known as "The Holy 
League," with the express purpose of defending the papacy and 
driving the French out of Italy. Henry was invited to join this 
league and make a joint attack with Ferdinand upon the French 
territories south of the Garonne. The humanists who hated war 
as a menace to civilization, looked on with dismay as they beheld 
this the first symptom that their patron and champion was cast 
after all in the same earthen mould as the other kings of Europe, his 
contemporaries; but the opportunity of regaining the old English 
foothold in Guienne, which had been held before Henry's eyes by his 
cunning father-in-law as the price of his assistance, was a tempta- 
tion which the headstrong young Tudor had no thought of resist- 



1513, 1513] FLODDEN FIELD 515 

ing. In spite of many protests, therefore, Henry entered into an 
active alliance with Ferdinand, Maximilian, Julius II., and the 
Republic of Venice, in order to cripple France and put a stop to 
her aggressions. 

The first venture of Henry was not assuring. The campaign in 
Guienne was a miserable fiasco; due partly to the failure of Ferdi- 
Henrv's first ^^^^^ ^^ render the assistance which he had promised, 
war^^ifj^ and partly to a mutiny of the English soldiers, who 
^5ii'- under the discouragements and hardships of the cam- 

paign lost heart and at last broke camp and sailed home without 
orders. Henry was furious and determined the next year to lead 
an army into France in person in order to retrieve the honor of 
tlie English name. This expedition was more successful. Admiral 
Howard, at the expense of his own life, prevented the French 
from interfering with the passage to Calais. The king advanced 
to the frontier fortress-town of Terouenne, where he was joined 
by the emperor Maximilian, who served under its walls as a volun- 
teer in the English army. A French force, which attempted to 
throw supplies into the city, was beaten off at Guinegate, retiring 
so precipitantly that the action was called the "Battle of the 
Spurs." Terouenne fell and then Tournay. In the meanwhile 
it became apparent to the high-spirited king that his wily allies 
were using him for their own purposes, allowing him to bear the 
burden of the war, while they expected to share the spoil. He 
drew off, therefore, and returned home in a mood such as might 
be expected of a man of his nature, when once awakened to the fact 
that he had been made the dupe of supposed friends. 

The ostensible occasion of Henry's withdrawal was an attack 

upon England by James IV. of Scotland, who, irritated by some 

recent grievances, in spite of his marriage to a Tudor 
Flodden . ° - ^ . , -, -, , -, ■, , -, . . , , . 

Field. Sep- princcss had yielded to the old traditional sympathies 

of the Scots with the French, and had taken advan- 
tage of Henry's absence to invade Northumberland. But the blow 
had already been skillfully evaded by Catharine who had promptly 
roused the council and dispatched an army to the north under the 
command of Thomas Howard, the earl of Surrey, and his son, also 
Thomas Howard, the brother of the late admiral. The Howards 



516 THE MONARCHY SUPREME [ 



Henry VIII. 



had met the Scots on Flodclen Field not far from the border and 
after a most skillfully conducted battle completely routed them; 
James himself was slain and his bloodstained plaid sent as a 
trophy to Henry. The death of King James left the Scottish 
kingdom to the distraction of a regency and Henry had little to 
fear farther from this source, but the war furnished him wil^h a 
pretext and at the close of the season he withdrew from the 
continent. 

The man who had done most perhaps to bring Henry into his 
present frame of mind was Thomas Wolsey, who since 1509 had 
been attached to the royal chapel and had attained a 
Woimu great influence over the king. This remarkable man, 

"perhaps the greatest of the long line of ecclesiastical 
statesmen from Lanfranc to Laud," was the son of a merchant of 
Ipswich. He had entered Oxford when a mere child and had 
been made a Bachelor of Arts at fifteen. He had risen rapidly, 
his unusual gifts having early attracted the attention of the new 
king, who had a kindly feeling for men who combined with phe- 
nomenal industry and energy the art of bringing things to pass. 
Trained as a churchman, Wolsey was yet a man of surpassing 
worldly wisdom, a politician and a statesman. "In penetration, 
in aptitude for business and indefatigable labor, he had no equal." 
The preparation for the French war had been largely committed 
to his care, and although at heart oj)posed to the war, he had 
thrown all his splendid energy into the work of equipping the 
army, thereby contributing not a little to its successes. He had 
also accompanied the expedition to the continent, had shared the 
hardships of the camp before Terouenne, and had become the 
king's chief and most trusted adviser. 

The deep humiliation and anger which Henry felt when once 
it dawned upon him that his two powerful allies were only playing 
upon his vanity in order to use him as a cat's-paw, had 
diplomatic gi^®^^ Wolsey his opportunity. He had long believed 
Woisetj^iiu ^'^'^^ ^^® ^^'^^® interests of England as well as her dig- 
nity lay on the side of a French alliance, and he at once 
gave all his attention to securitig this object, with the result that 
in a short time he not only brought about an advantageous peace 



1514-1519] THOMAS WOLSET 517 

but had further secured the friendship of France by the marriage 
of Louis XII. and Henry's youngest sister Mary Tudor. Henry 
was delighted with the success of Wolsey's plans, and showered 
upon him a succession of honors and preferments which would 
have turned the head of a smaller man; in 1514 making him 
bishop of Lincoln,' and in 1515 archbishop of York and chancel- 
lor. In 1517 he also used his influence to secure for his favorite 
the cardinal's cap and had him appointed papal legate for England. 
Wolsey now had a free hand, and for the next fifteen years ^H'acti- 
cally shaped and directed the affairs of England both at home and 
abroad . 

Louis XII., unfortunately, did not long survive his Tudor mar- 
riage, and his death, within three months, brought the first diplo- 
matic triumj)li of Wolsey to nought. Francis of 
dipiomatu; Angouleme succeeded to the French throne, January 1, 
Woiseii^"^ 1515; a man fully as ambitious as Louis and with all 
the fire and energy of a youth of twenty-two in addi- 
tion. His first exploit was to recover the lost ground of France in 
northern Italy, winning the brilliant victory of Marignano over 
the Swiss mercenaries of the duke of Milan. The 
September,' great powors at once took alarm; but the death of Fer- 

1515. ox 

dinand early the next year and the succession of Maxi- 
milian's grandson, Charles of Burgundy, to the Spanish throne, as 
well as the apijroaching reversion of the Hapsburg interests in the 
east, more than offset any fear of France which may have arisen 
from the success of Francis at Marignano. Wolsey, true to his 
policy of favoring the weaker party, succeeded in bringing about 
a new alliance of England with France, arranging that Tournay 

should be restored for 600,000 crowns, and that 
TTeo/tv of 
London, Henry's infant daughter Mary should marry the infant 

son of Francis. The Scottish allies of France, also, 

were not forgotten, and finally the new pope Leo X., the emperor, 

and Charles of Spain were persuaded to enter the peace. It was 

a great triumph for the Ipswich merchant's son who thus posed 

as the successful peace-maker of Christendom. 

In January 1519 all the plotting and scheming of old "Kaiser 

^ The year before, Henry had made Wolsey bishop of Tournay. 



518 THE MONARCHY SUPREME [henky VIIL 

Max"^ came to an end, and he followed Ferdinand, his rival and 
master in craft, to the grave. Who should succeed him 
YcMon"^*"^' in the imperial office? The imperial title was not hered- 
itary but lay partly in the power of the pope to grant, 
and partly in the power of seven princes of the empire, called 
"electors." These electors were the archbishops of Mainz, 
Cologne, and Treves, the elector of Saxony, the margrave of Bran- 
denburg, the king of Bohemia, and the count palatine of the 
Rhine. These seven might present a candidate, who then bore 
the title of "King of the Eomans" and was also titular king of 
the Germans ; but he was only a sort of de facto emperor until he 
had been dnly crowned and consecrated by the pope. The papal 
coronation was not a mere tribute on the part of the emperor to 
the position of the pope in the empire, as when the archbishop of 
Canterbury is allowed to crown a king of England; it was a 
confirmation by the church of the choice of the electors and was 
necessary to the imperial title. Hence popes might refuse the 
honor, though emperors elect_ had not hesitated in such cases to 
invade Italy at the head of an army in order to force the pope to 
confer the title, or failing in that, to make a pope of their own. 
Since the days of the Hohenstaufen, however, the candidates as 
simply titular German kings had _commonly possessed so little 
political power, that they were content to wait beyond the Alps 
and secure by diplomacy the approval of an obstinate pope. 

Of the four candidates who were presented to the electoral 
college in 1519, Frederick the elector of Saxony, whose pure Ger- 
man blood appealed powerfully to the national sentiment of the 
people, was the popular candidate and probably could 
Election of have had the honor if he would; Henry VIII. had no 
June 28, 1519. chance at all, nor did any one but himself think seri- 
ously of his candidacy; Francis I. had a wide reputa- 
tion as a soldier which greatly commended him to the electors as 
a promising champion against the Turk, whom recent successes 
had brought into dangerous proximity to eastern Germany. 
Francis also possessed unlimited resources for bribery which he 

1 For sketch of his character, see Stubbs, Lectures on Mediaeval and 
Modern History, p. 385 and following. 



1519-1521] ELECTIOlSr OP CHARLES V. 519 

was perfectly willing to use. The fourth candidate was Charles 
of Spain, young, yet untried and without credit for any personal 
strength of character; he was also without experience in war and 
his widely scattered dominions promised to keep him so busy else- 
where that he could give little attention to defending Europe 
against the Turk. He was, however, greatly feared by Pope 
Leo, since in the recent scramble of the powers in Italy the Span- 
ish-Hapsburg princes had got possession of Naples, and the pope 
had no desire to. see their influence farther exalted in the penin- 
sula. The pope was also averse to the candidacy of Francis, whose 
hold upon north Italy at the time was equally menacing to papal 
independence, and in his heart really favored a third candidate, 
possibly the elector Frederick, but in an attempt to play off the 
two most powerful candidates against each other he contrived to 
rouse the national sentiment of the Germans who took umbrage at 
what they were pleased to regard as a papal interference with the 
rights of the German electors. The pope then in alarm lest 
Charles should be chosen after all, took up the candidacy of Francis, 
only to precipitate the catastrophe which he most feared. On 
June 28, 1519, Charles was elected without a dissenting voice. ^ 
The pope was in no condition to resist; the religious troubles 
of Germany were becoming every day more serious; with the 
powerful support of the new emperor, he might check them; 
but if Charles were driven into opposition, no one could fore- 
see the outcome. The pope, therefore, abandoned Francis 
and secretly allied himself with Charles. "It is a coinci- 
dence, remarkable enough, that the edict of Worms" which 
formally condemned Martin Luther and his writings. 
Edict of "bears the same date as the day on which, with profound 

Worms, May \ i , 

25, 1521. secrecy, he (the pope) undertook to become the ally of 

Charles against Francis." ^ 

Francis had been beaten ; moreover the vast increase of the 

power of the Spanish-Hapsburg prince made him a more dangerous 

rival of France than ever, and the alliance of Henry of England 

1 Upon the election of Charles V. see Creighton, History of the Papacy 
during the Reformation, V, pp. 94-109. 

2 Creighton, V, p. 157. 



520 THE MONARCHY SUPREME [henry vm. 

correspondingly important to the French sovereign. But Charles 
also realized the importance of the friendship of England, and 

just as eagerly sought for an alliance with Henry. 
WoUev'wuh Wolsey, however, who was still anxious to keep the peace 
Charles and Qf Europe, sought by holding both suitors at arms length 

to preserve a sort of balance between them and post- 
pone the approaching war indefinitely. Interviews were arranged 
for Henry with each monarch. In May 1520 Charles visited 
Henry at Canterbury; and shortly after Henry and Francis met 
in the neighborhood of Calais, where in a continual round of 
tournaments, feasts and pageants, glitter and wastefulness, known 
as the "Field of the Cloth of Gold," each monarch attempted to 

outdo the other in giving evidences of gracious good 
Field of the will and confidence. Yet the famous meeting had 
1520. ' hardly broken up, before Henry again met Charles at 

Gravelines. The ingenuity of Wolsey, however, was 
not equal to the task of keeping the two monarchs from flying at 
each other, and the next year, April, 1521, Francis invaded almost 
simultaneously the territories of Burgundy and Navarre. When 
Charles heard that Francis had at last broken the peace, he saw 
his advantage and exclaimed, "Thank God that I have not struck 
the first blow, and that the king of France wishes to make me a 
greater than I am ! Either I shall become a poor emperor, or he 
a poor king." Wolsey's policy now was to keep England out 
of the quarrel as long as possible. But the commercial inter- 
ests of England in the Netherlands could not be ignored, and a 
second visit of Charles to England resulted in a formal alliance 
with Spain and Burgundy, and the appearance of an English 
army in France. 

It was during this alliance with Charles, that the papacy began 
to loom up before Wolsey as the possible goal of his ambition. 

Both Charles and Francis had sought to win his sup- 
Woiseyand port by promising a friendly influence in the College of 
honor. Cardinals. But Wolsey was unwilling to put himself 

into the hands of men who only wanted to use him, in 
order to trick his master into a course which his own judgment 
condemned. There is, moreover, no reason to doubt his devotion 



1525-1527] WOLSEY'S UNPOPULARITY 521 

to England or to believe that he sought the papacy un- 
worthily. 

Wolsey, at heart, had never been in sympathy with the Span- 
ish alliance, and when Francis was defeated and taken prisoner at 

Pavia in 1525, he saw with alarm the growing power of 
dons Charles, d^^'^^s V., and set himself to work to persnade Henry 

to throw his weight into the other scale for the purpose 
of maintaining the balance of power. This was not a difficult 
thing to do, for Henry's arms had accomplished little or nothing 
in his direct attacks upon France, and the people were growing 
restless under the hicreasing load of taxation. Henry, moreover, 
was getting tired of his Spanish wife and was inclined to treat all 
her friends as his enemies. In 1527 the troops of Charles V. 
stormed Rome, captured the pojDe, Clement A^IL, and after an 
exhibition of lawless violence which shocked Europe, threw the 
venerable head of the Christian church iuto prison. Henry, who 
was still a zealous Catholic, resented the personal indignity to the 
pope and sent a formal protest to Charles. He was, therefore, 
once more in a mood to listen to his minister, and consented for 
the third time to enter into a French alliance. 

The third alliance v/ith France greatly increased the unpopu- 
larity of Wolsey. He had never been loved by the people, and 

had always been more or less hated by the nobles who 
SSttjA^' ^^^^ ^®^^^ irritated by his pride and magnificence, but 

feared him because of his influence with the king. 
There was also a lingering hostility to France among the nobles, 
who cherished the old traditions of the "Hundred Years' War" 
and could not take kindly to the French sympathies of the court. 
The Commons also had their grievances, for the chancellor had lit- 
tle use for a parliament in his system. He believed that a king 
ought to be able to rule without the aid of his'people and regarded 
the calling of a parliament as a confession of weakness on the part 
of the crown and a source of annoyance and vexation. For the 
first eight years of his chancellorship, he had managed to get 
along without any parliaments at all ; but the burden of the French 
war had forced the king to appeal to the people, and Wolsey in 
the king's name, but against his own inclination, had asked for 



522 THE MONARCHY SUPKEME [henry VUI. 

t-he enormous grant of £800,000; and althongh parliament had 
given him only about one-quarter of the amount, the increased 
burden upon the people was sufficient to call forth a storm of 
satire and invective against the unpopular minister. He was 
called the "butcher's dog," a "mastiff cur;" he was described in 
doggerel verse as ugly in face and form ; it was said that he had 
no respect for God or man ; that he took bribes of the French ; 
that he was illiterate, a "poor master of arts whose Latin tongue 
doth hobble;" so proud and haughty that none of the great lords 
durst speak at the council table in his presence. These charges 
were without foundation, and yet they revealed the dangerous 
mood of the people. In 1525, the king again attempted to raise 
money by what he called "an amicable loan" which 

"Tlie ami- 

cabieiuan;' was really the old benevolence, only in a new guise. 

Englishmen everywhere objected; in many places their 
ill-humor expressed itself in rioting and acts of mob violence. 
Even Henry at last saw the impossibility of collecting the money 
and right royally remitted any further payment. Wolsey it seems 
had opposed both the tax and the amicable loan, but had been 
overruled by the king. His office, however, compelled him to 
superintend the levy, and thus the people had come to look upon 
him as responsible for the misdoing of their king. Yet the 
chancellor was not a man to shrink from the unpleasant burdens 
of his office, and in a spirit of devotion of which Henry A'^III. was 
unworthy, he freely accepted his unpopularity as one of the inci- 
dents of his position. "Because every man layeth the burden 
from him," he said, "I am content to take it on me, and to endure 
the fame and worse of the people, for my good will towards the 
king, . . . but the eternal God knovveth all." 

With the church over which the position of jmpal legate gave 
Wolsey great power, he was no more popular than with barons 

and commons. He saw the need of reform, but pro- 
th"dlw^clf posed to reform, not the doctrines of the church, nor 

the relations of the church to the papacy, but the daily 
life of the clergy. He was also in sympathy with the new educa- 
tional ideals which had been brought into England by Colet and 
others, and sought to convert the funds of useless and decayed 



1487-1535] THE SUCCESSION 523 

monasteries, of which there were a great many in England at the 
time, into the foundations of schools and colleges. ' In this he 
had the full sympathy of both pope and king, and was only follow- 
ing the policy of William of Wykeham and other conservative 
churchmen of the past, who saw that there were too many lazy 
monks in the church to the number of hard students. This great 
work was fairly begun in 1524 in the founding of Cardinal College 
at Oxford^ and a grammar school at Ipswich. Like everything 
else that Wolsey touched these foundations were established upon 
a scale of magnificence unprecedented; but unfortunately Wolsey 
was so busily occupied in many things that he had time to carry 
forward his plans of reform just far enough to alarm the short- 
sighted and not far enough to win the confidence of those who 
wished for more sweeping results. 

Thus Wolsey stood in the unenviable position of a great leader 
without a following, who is feared by all, but trusted by none. 

It required only a sign from the king for all parties to 
ttmorpoT- combine for his overthrow. This sign was given soon 
tiletucc^fi^n. ^^*^^' ^^*^ conclusion of the third alliance with France, 

but it was due to no fault of Wolsey 's. One by one the 
possible Yorkist claimants of the throne had been removed; 
Edward Plantagenet the son of Clarence had been executed in 
1499; of the sons of Elizabeth, Edward IV. 's sister, John de la 
Pole, the earl of Lincoln, had been killed at Stoke in 1487; 
Edmund de la Pole, the duke of Suffolk, had been executed by 
Henry's order in 1513, and Richard de la Pole, the husband of 
Clarence's daughter Margaret, had been killed at Pavia in 1535. 
Even the collateral branches of the Beaufort line had not been 
safe from the ruthless jealousy of the king, when once the succes- 
sion was in question. Edward Stafford Duke of Buckingham was 
the son of that Henry Duke of Buckingham who had been put to 
death by Eichard III. in 1483, and hence was the grandson of a 
Margaret Beaufort. But he was also by direct descent from 
Anne, daughter of Thomas of Gloucester, a representative of the 
youngest son of Edward III., and if the legitimac}^ of the Beau- 

1 Remodeled and refounded by Henry VIII. after the great cardinal's 
fall, as Christ Church, the name which it still bears. 



524 THE MONARCHY SUPREME [henrt Vlll. 

forts were questioned, had even a better right to the crown than 
Henry VII. He was, moreover, wealthy and powerful, and had 
been foolish enough to talk about his prospects of inheriting the 
throne. It was enough to rouse the suspicions of the king, and in 
1521 Buckingham was tried upon a cliarge of treason, condemned, 
and promptly executed. 

The succession, however, was still Henry's sensitive point; and 
the fatality which had attended the children of Catharine began 

to prey upon a conscience which had had at best but a 
poses f 7(6 poor training, and was liable to the morbid sensitiveness 

of a superstitious nature. He began, therefore, to ques- 
tion the validity of the papal dispensation which had authorized 
him to marry his brother's widow. Henry's tender conscience, 
moreover, was greatly reinforced by a violent passion which he had 
formed for a young lady of the court, Anne Boleyn, a grand- 
daughter of the earl of Surrey, victor of Flodden. The new fav- 
orite was not blind to the significance of the attentions of the king 
but had steadfastly refused to become his mistress. The unfor- 
tunate Catharine, therefore, was plainly in the way; and, although 
she had always been a faithful wife and most unselfishly devoted 
to her husband's interests, with characteristic willfulness, Henry 
set himself to get rid of her by invoking the technicalities of the 
Canon Law. 

The matter was laid before AVolsey who naturally opposed a 
project which promised complications from which the wisest might 

shrink. But Henry was stubbornly bent upon his pur- 

Clement VII. j r r 

and the di- pose and Wolsey, against judgment and conscience, con- 
sented to serve his master. In 1527 the king appealed 
directly to Pope Clement, asking him to relieve him of the bond 
which Julius II. had sanctioned. Clement, however, was by no 
means free to act. The emperor Charles was Catharine's nephew 
and he had clearly indicated his purpose to support her interests 
and resent as a personal affront the irreparable wrong which 
Henry would have the pope commit against her and her daughter. 
Charles, moreover, was actually in possession of the Holy City, 
the pope was a captive, and his political power in Italy trem- 
bling in the balance. In Germany, also, where the Reformation was 



1529, 1530] THE FALL OF WOLSET 525 

making rapid strides, the support and friendship of Charles was 
more necessary to tlie pope than ever. Yet on the other hand the 
pope feared to offend Henr)-; he knew the character of the man 
and did not wish to make him an enemy. He, therefore, chose 
the hardly less dangerous plan of delay and non-committal. 

It was Wolsey's policy, however, to force an immediate decision 
from the pope, and he accordingly pressed for permission to hear 
the case in his legatine court. Clement could not 
Tiie trial, refuse and despatched Cardinal Campeggio to act with 
Wolsey. But Campeggio 's movements were so dilatory 
that the trial was not fairly opened until June 1539. While Cam- 
peggio was thus wearing out the patience of Henry by his policy of 
obstruction and delay, Catharine, satisfied tliat she was not to 
have just treatment in any court in which Wolsey presided, 
appealed directly to Rome in hope of securing a hearing before the 
pontiff himself. When, therefore, Clement at last interfered and 
summoned the whole case to his own tribunal, Henry's disgust 
passed to angry defiance. He knew that he had little to hope 
from the pope and took his action as equivalent to an adverse 
decision. 

Up to this point Henry had regarded himself as a most loyal 
son of the church. He had even entered the lists against the Ger- 
man Luther, answering Luther's attack on the seven 
Wolsey %3o. sacraments of the church in a reply characteristically 
violent and dogmatic, called the "Defense of the Seven 
Sacraments," in which he had upheld the divine origin of the 
papacy and the authority of the pope in matters of doctrine. The 
pope, Leo X., pleased by the high quality of the champion, if not 
by the quality of his work, had bestowed upon him the title of 
"Defender of the Faith," thereby much elating the royal theo- 
logian, since now he had a title as high sounding as that of the 
"most Christian" king of France or the "Catholic" king of Spain. 
But all was now forgotten in a blaze of wrath against the pope 
who had dared to thwart his plan of getting rid of his unwelcome 
wife. His first step was to attack the legate of his own making. 
Wolsey was in no way responsible for v\^hat had taken place; but 
he was the nearest and most conspicuous representative of the 



626 THE MONAECHY SUPREME [henry viii. 

papal dignity. The instrument, moreover, which Henry selected 
for making the attack was the old Statute of Praemunire^ which 
it was claimed by the crown advisers Wolsey had violated in acting 
as papal legate. The attack was as mean as the method was 
unjust and unfair; for Henry himself had secured the appointment 
for Wolsey and had practically thrust it upon him. Wolsey, how- 
ever, knew the temper of the king too well to think of resistance ; he 
knew also the temper and envy of those who surrounded him too 
well to think that lie could secure a fair trial in any court of the 
kingdom and, gracefully accepting his fate, confessed his fault and 
acknowledged himself liable to the full penalties of the law. Henry 
was somewhat mollified by the humble spirit of his once splendid 
minister, and after allowing him to endure many petty annoyances 
at the hands of obsequious servants, finally issued a formal pardon, 
restoring with it a part of Wolsey's property to the amount of 
£6,000. Wolsey was then sent north to resume his humbler 
duties of archbishop of York. Here he spent the spring and 
summer of 1530, but his spirit was broken and his health rapidly 
gave way. His enemies, chief among whom was Thomas Howard, 
now duke of Norfolk, and Anne Boleyn, who made Wolsey respon- 
sible for the failure of the divorce, still pursued him with a vindic- 
tiveness which was to be satisfied only by his death, Wolsey, when 
the first note of alarm had been sounded, with the purest motive 
had sent an appeal by a secret agent to Francis, asking him to 
intercede in his behalf. The message, however, had fallen into 
the hands of Thomas Howard, and was now used as a basis for a 
new and more serious charge, that of treason. The fallen chan- 
cellor was at once seized and hurried south with the Tower of 
London as his destination. On the way his friends, for he still 
had some, tried to hearten him, but he sadly responded: "I per- 
ceive more than you can imagine or know; experience of old hath 
taught me." He was already a dying man. When he reached 
Leicester Abbey his strength was failing so rapidly that his 
captors could take him no further. He died on the 29th of 
November 1530, worn out by toil, broken by the sense of disgrace; 
"a very wretch replete with misery." In his last breath he 

iStubbs, C. H., Ill, pp. 341, 342. 



1530] THE DEATH OF WOLSEY 527 

acknowledged his oue great fault: "Had I but served God as 
diligently as I have served the king, he would not have given me 
over in my gray hairs. But this is my due reward for my pains 
and study, not regarding my service to God, but only my duty to 
my prince." 

So fell Thomas Wolsey, possibly the greatest, "certainly the 
most magnificent in the line of ecclesiastical statesmen." Appear- 
ing at a time when "king worship" was rapidly becoming a sort 
of religion with a great body of the English people, he could be 
an "absolutist," and yet a patriot; for he sincerely believed that 
the exaltation of England lay in the exaltation of the monarch. 
This was both the excuse and the justification of that marvelous 
magnificence which distinguishes Wolsey among all the great min- 
isters of great kings; "his palaces, his train of gentlemen clad in 
velvet of the cardinal color, the eight antechambers rich with 
hangings, through which suitors passed to his presence; the silver 
crosses, the pillars and pole-axes, which were carried before him 
and about him when he went abroad, the prodigal splendor of the 
entertainments which he gave to king and court," all were justi- 
fied because they enhanced the glory of a master who could afford 
so magnificent a subject. His histor}^, his remarkable rise and no 
less remarkable fall, reflects both the greatness and the meanness 
of the king whom he served, who could create him, shower upon 
him dignities and wealth, who could allow him to bear the burden 
of the unpopularity which he himself had roused by his own 
tyrannies and blunders, and then fling him at last as a sacrifice to 
the vengeance of the people. It was the Tudor fashion. 



CHAPTEE III 

THE ECCLESIASTICAL REVOLT OF ENGLAND 

HENRY VIII. , 15.10-1539 

The universal recognition of the authority of the pope by the 
states of western Europe, is a marked feature of the later middle 

ages. The lines, however, which defined the limits of 
reciKirutum that authority, had never been clearly drawn. The 
autuoritii in world state was in theory a kind of theocracy, of which 

the real sovereign was God, or Christ. The will of 
the world sovereign was made known through the ministers 
of the church, expressed in the decisions of councils and synods, 
but most directly through the divinely appointed head of the 
church, the pope, the executor of its decrees, the interpreter 
of its laws and doctrines, and the vindicator of its rights; and in 
exercising the functions of this high office, popes had not hesi- 
tated to rebuke princes, or threaten their kingdoms with the 
interdict, or the kings themselves with excommunication or depo- 
sition. In general the acts which brought king or emperor under 
the papal displeasure were either offenses against the moral law 
of Christendom or encroachments upon the spiritual authority of 
the church. Yet owing to the hopeless entanglement of church 
law and state law, the pope could not submit the representatives 
of the state to church discipline without encroaching upon the 
independence of the state. Yew, moreover, grasped clearly the 
idea of the national state; all Christian men were regarded as 
members of one common society, represented in the one visible 
church and united in the one supreme visible head; and 
although there were many symptoms of independent national life 
so far as the relations of kings to each other Avere concerned, and 
though there had been from time to time vigorous protests against 
the encroachments of individual popes upon the rights of nations, 
\ men were not agreed as to just where the limits of papal authority 
ended or the independent rights of the national king began. 

528 



THE PAPAL AUTHOEITY OVER ENGLAND 529 

In England the rejection of the pope's claim to feudal sover- 
eignty by William the Conqueror had very early given a somewhat 
clearer tone to the perpetual controversy between king 
Mngsand and pope. Jolin, however, had obscured matters some- 
what by the pledges which he made Innocent III., 
and Innocent's successors had sought to rule England through a 
resident legate as a province of the papal empire. But Edward I. 
had once more asserted the temporal independence of England, 
denying the right of the pope to homage and refusing the tribute, 
and Edward III. had formally and finally repudiated the pledges of 
John altogether. Thus the question of temporal sovereignty had 
been definitely settled, but up to the reign of Henry VIII. the gen- 
eral ecclesiastical authority of the pope had never been denied by 
English kings, although when it came to the application of the 
principle of spiritual lordship, they had frequently resented the 
intrusion of the papal authority as an unwarranted interference 
in the affairs of the kingdom. 

This authority was expressed in certain very definite claims, 

each of which, at some time, had been recognized by English 

kings both in theory and in practice. These claims 

Thenannl ./ i 

claims over were: 1. The appellate iurisdiction of the papal court 
England. . , 

over the ecclesiastical courts of England. English 

churchmen had often abused this principle, and there had been 
some grumbling as early as Henry II. 's time; but it was not until 
the reign of Edward III. that an appeal to the pope was actually 
prohibited by parliament in the famous Statute of Praemunire. 
The relations between the English church and the great ecclesias- 
tical system of the continent, however, were so close that the 
practice had never been wholly abandoned. 2. A certain right of 
taxation. The pope had since the tenth century regularly levied 
a penny upon each hearth in the kingdom, the famous Peter's 
Pence. ^ This tax which England had paid regularly in company 
with other of the northern nations of Europe, was a matter of 
considerable importance to the papal treasury. Since the time 
of John XXII. (1316-1334), the pope had also claimed from each 

'For the origin of Peter's Pence, see Stubbs, C. H., 1, pp. 250, 251. 
Cf. with Ramsay, F. E., I, p. 238. 



530 THE ECCLESIASTICAL REVOLT OF ENGLAISTD [henry Vill. 

ecclesiastical holding the first fruits, or annates, that is the whole 
or a certain part of the profit of the living for one year. This 
was ostensibly a tax upon ecclesiastics, but indirectly it was felt 
by the whole nation and was generally regarded as a serious drain 
upon the national resources.^ 3. The popes also claimed the 
right to interfere in the disposal of bishoprics and other prefer- 
ments of the English church. The free way in Avhich they had 
made use of this right, frequently appointing to English livings 
foreigners who never came to England at all, had brought out 
the Statute of Provisors of Edward III., which checked but did 
not stop the custom. 4. The pope from the days of Gregory 
the Great had cherished and fostered the monastery, and by the 
practice of granting exemptions from the jurisdiction of local 
bishops, had made the monks directly dependent upon himself 
and thus independent of the national church. 5. The pope, also, 
exercised the right of appointing a special legate, or minister, to 
represent his interests at the English court. This right English 
kings had recognized, but there had always been a decided opposi- 
tion to the appointment of foreigners, and the popes had found it 
greatly to their interests to select a legate from the ranks of resi- 
dent churchmen, and in this way had secured the services of a 
long line of eminent and useful men, as Henry of Winchester, 
Henry Beaufort, John Morton, and, most magnificent of all 
Thomas Wolsey. 6. There was also besides these claims, all of 
which the popes had exercised at various times, an important body 
of forms and doctrines, which the English church held in com- 
mon with the rest of Christendom, and which in a certain way 
could be exemplified and justified only in a common church 
subordinated to the one visible head. 

Here then were very marked and very tangible lines along 
which the papal authority had been accustomed to act directly 

upon English life, all more or less clearly recognized by 
fi'^T^d^^"^ the English government at the beginning of the reign 

of Henry VIII. The history of the revolt of England 
from the papal system is the record of the successive steps by 

iln the act of 1532 it was formally alleged that since the second year 
of Henry VII., the annates had taken out of the kingdom £160,000. 



PREPARATION FOR REVOLT 531 

which Henry A^III. and his successor sundered these ties and 

advanced by a series of denials and repudiations to formal and 

complete indej)endence. 

Many events had prepared England for this step. Since the 

thirteenth century she had had her chronic quarrel with the papal 

idea, especially as it was embodied in the appellate 

for revolt in -jurisdiction of the Roman Curia and the claim of the 
England. . . ip-t-ittt- 

pope to a voice m the disposal of English livings. 

The Hundred Years' War which had strengthened English 
national life, had indirectly affected the attitude of the English 
people toward a system which was built u^Don the older imperial 
idea; an idea which ignored, if it did not directly deny, the idea 
of the nation. The Great Schism, also, which for so many years 
had divided the Christian world against itself, had seriously weak- 
ened the idea of the one family of Christian men united in the one 
papal head. 

Other events taking place far remote from England had also 
prepared h-er people for the same result. The remarkable series 
of inventions and discoveries which mark the close of the Middle 
Ages, the discovery of Schwarz, the invention of Gutenberg and 
Fust, the successful ventures of Columbus and de Gama, the bold 
theories of Copernicus, the studies of Bracciolini, Petrarch, and 
a host of others, had greatly stimulated and enlarged the intellec- 
tual life of the times. A second universe had opened to the here- 
tofore straitened mind of Europe; men thought in lightning 
flashes ; they felt the conflict of this new cosmos with the old 
order, and began to question the long established ideas which lay 
at the foundation of the existing organization of state and church 
and society. From questioning they passed to formulation ; novel 
and startling ideas were promulgated about science and art, 
about theology, about God and nature and man ; a revolt against 
all the existing order found voice, took form, and was accepted by 
an ever increasing constituency. 

In its first form this revolt was intellectual, largely negative, 
and manifested itself mostly in a desire to break away from old 
canons and old restraints; the human mind faced the unknown 
^ea and in the wild, fierce Joy of freedom thought only of throw- 



532 THE ECCLESIASTICAL REVOLT OF ENGLAND [henry Vlll. 

ing overboard chart and compass. . Then men began to seek prac- 
tical results in newer and better methods of education. Yet at 
the close of the first decade of the sixteenth century 

First form, there had been no formal break with the old system, 
of the revolt. _ -^ 

Pope Leo himself could be a humanist and deeply sym- 
pathize with the Avork of the Italian scholars and still be regarded 
as worthy to be a pope. 

It was in this phase that the new learning had first reached 
England in the reign of Henry VII. Neither Grocyn, nor 
First -phase I^iU'^^cre, nor Dean Colet, nor Erasmus, nor Sir Thomas 

of reforma- More, thought of overthrowing the established order. 
tion in Eng- ' & to 

land. They looked with deep grief upon the rent in the 

seamless robe; but they hoped to mend it, not to throw it away 
for a new coat. They wanted reformation, not revolution. Hence 
they gave their thought to founding schools and colleges ; they 
attacked the wealth of the clergy, the useless lives of the monastic 
orders, and exposed in unanswerable satire, as in Erasmus's 
"Colloquy on Pilgrimages," the violations of common sense which 
masqueraded under the guise of religion in some of the prevalent 
superstitions. As in Italy, intelligent leaders of the church, men 
like Cardinal Morton and Cardinal Wolsey, gave these earnest 
men their support and sympathy, openly acknowledged the need 
of reform, and used their influence to promote it in a moderate 
way. 

Such reformers, however, moved too slowly to control or even 
direct the rapid tide of events. The radicals of one day became 

the conservatives of the next. It was now no longer a 
The rising fg^ scholars, but Europe that was awakening. Men 

had wearied of trimming off dead branches, and began 
to lay the ax at the roots of the tree. The trumpet had been put 
to bolder lips, and its fierce notes, shattering the startled air, were 
rudely dispelling gentle dreams of impossible Utopias by the call 
to arms. The church had had its opportunity of reform ; it had 
summoned the great Council of Constance for that purpose, but 
had signally failed. Everywhere national life was asserting itself 
in fierce national wars, in which the papacy had become involved 
as a political factor, and men had refused to distinguish between 



SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CHANGES. 533 

the head of Christendom and the head of a petty Itahan state. 
The result was inevitable; the great European ecclesiastical sys- 
tem was everywhere undermined and the influence of its repre- 
sentative head weakened. Its ultimate dissolution apparently 
was at hand. 

Great and far-reaching social changes also were preparing 
men's minds for a new order. From the new world which had 

been uncovered beyond the seas streams of precious 
changes metal very early began to pour into Europe, vastly 

increasing the volume of coin in circulation, stimulat- 
ing all forms of industry, expanding commerce, and appealing to 
all the wild adventurous spirits of the age through the most 
ignoble of human passions, the lust for gold. Prices rose enor- 
mously; the distress and actual suffering increased proportionately 
of those who were still held under the older social forms, who by 
the survival of feudal law were shut out from any share in the 
increasing prosperity ; and soon vagrancy and all the other accom- 
paniments of economic revolution made their appearance. Eng- 
land had already advanced far beyond the rest of Europe in the 
gradual lapse of villainage and the development of a free yeo- 
manry. But she was handicapped by a vast population of free 
poor, who lived as tenants upon the estates of the great landown- 
ers and by reason of their very freedom were now exposed to the 
greed of rapacious landlords who in the mad rush for wealth did 
not hesitate to turn their tenants adrift by thousands in order to 
use their lands for more remunerative forms of production. The 
wool trade particularly had rapidly developed during the century, 
and when the rise in prices began to unsettle the old values, the fever 
of speculation struck the English rural landlords ; they went wild 
over sheep raising. Vast areas were taken from cultivation for 
the sheepwalk ; the old cultivators of the soil were not needed 
and were everywhere turned into the highways to beg, or left to 
drift into the cities to join the swelling population of the slums. 
Here then was soil well prepared; here also were seeds of revolt 
against the old order, everywhere scattered broadcast. This was 
the moment which Henry selected for forcing his quarrel upon 
the pope. 



534 THE ECCLESIASTICAL REVOLT OF ENGLAND [heney vm. 

After the fall of Wolsey Henry adopted a new policy in the 
treatment of the nation. Thus far Edward IV. could not have 

been more indifferent to public opinion ; for like him 
mTveovie'^^ Henry had ignored parliaments and defied popular dis- 
Meiice ''^^' ^PPi'oval. This had been without doubt largely due 

to Wolsey's influence; but now with the incoming of 
the new chancellor, Sir Thomas More, Henry deliberately adopted 
the policy of taking the people into his confidence, and henceforth 
does nothing without a parliament. 

The parliament of 1529, the famous "Reform Parliament," 
met on the od of November and continued in existence through 

a long series of sessions extending over seven years. 
p^ruament This gave the body some sense of coherence ; it also 

gave some unity and continuity to its work. The 
Upper House consisted of about eighty-eight members, fifty-eight 
of whom were churchmen; the Lower House was composed of 
about three hundred members, of whom seventy-four were sent 
up by the shires, the remainder by cities and boroughs. The 
members represented fairly the ideas of the governing class, the 
gentry, burghers, and lawyers. Henry knew that from such a par- 
liament he had nothing to fear. The laity had long complained of 
the burdens which the church had imposed upon them, and had 
looked with greedy eyes upon the vast wealth which had passed 
into the hands of monasteries and which was yielding no adequate 
return in any visible benefit to the nation. 

The Reform Parliament began its first sitting within a week 
after the condemnation of Wolsey. The leaders had evidently 

been well tutored in the part which they were 
of the Re- expected to play and at once began the attack. They 

form Parlia- j. j. ^ o ■ ./ 

'merit upon complained that the laws of the church were enacted 
without reference to the civil authority; they com- 
plained of the money which men had to pay for the administration 
of the sacraments, of the vexatious annoyance caused by the 
sunwioners and by the long journeys to the archbishops' courts, of 
the way in which the episcopal examiners put to accused persons 
cunningly devised questions in order to entrap them into heretical 
admissions, of the abuses incident to conferring benefices upon 



1531] henry's first victory over the church 535 

children, of the cost of obtaining probate of wills, and of the 
excessive fees.^ Henry in reply asked the parliament to frame 
acts necessary to remedy the evils of which it complained, and 
sent the petition to Archbishop Warham., Warham laid the 
paper before his bishops, and elicited a reply which displayed a 
singular obtnseness to the peril of the church and an equally 
singular ignorance of English institutions. Summed up the reply 
meant that the churchmen acknowledged no authority in the 
making of their laws save the Holy Scripture and the Catholic 
Church, and that the king would do well to "temper his own laws 
into conformity with these. ' '^ 

Here then was presented a very definite issue; but an issue in 
which all the advantages lay on the king's side because he was 

sure to have the parliament and the nation with him. 
^Moni^^^'^^ Henry saw his advantage, and proposed to put the 

supremacy of state laAv over church law to a definite 
test by declaring that the whole body of the clergy who had 
acknowledged Wolsey's legatine authority, had been guilty of 
violating the Statute of Praemunire and were thus liable to the 
penalties of imprisonment and forfeiture. The convocation had 
no thought of resistance ; they too had now learned the temper of 
their JSTero; the very stupendousness of the charge amazed and 
stunned; smitten with panic they thought only of submission in 
order to avert the next blow, the nature of which they might 
imagine. On the 24th of January 1531 convocation voted to pay 
into the royal treasury the sum of £118,000 as a penalty for the 
alleged crime. But Henry was not to be satisfied with a half 
victory, and refused to accept the fine, unless the church should 
definitely recognize him as its supreme .head. Two weeks later, 
therefore, they formally but reluctantly acknowledged him to be 
"the singular protector and only supreme governor of the English 
Church, and, as far as the law of Christ permits, its supreme 
head." 



1 For the Petition of Grievances, see Gee and Hardy, Docs., pp. 145-153. 
'^For Warham's reply to the King, see Gee and Hardy, Docs., pp. 
154-178. 



536 THE ECCLESIASTICAL REVOLT OF ENGLAND [henry Vlll. 

The effect of this act of convocation was virtually to give to 
Henry the authority Avhicli the pope had heretofore wielded in 

the English Chnrch. Still Henry was not yet willing 
oj'thedecia- to sever his kingdom altogether from the papacy. The 

Peter's Pence and the first fruits continued to be regu- 
larly paid, and the doctrinal authority of the universal church 
recognized. So far the king had merely denied the appellate 
jurisdiction of the Holy See, and secured the recognition of the 
civil authority over the acts of convocation. 

Parliament in the meantime had taken up the ax also, and in 
response to Henry's request brought forth a series of acts which 

struck at the abuses which most nearly affected the 
Tiie reform classes whicli its membership represented. The fines 

acts of 1529. . 

and fees which ecclesiastical courts might prescribe were 
fixed; the practice of seizing "mortuaries," the best chattel, or 
the "uj)most cloth" which covered tlie dead body, was abolished; 
clergymen were forbidden to trade for profit; plural holdings 
were to be allowed only when the livings were small and were then 
to be limited to four. These acts were moderate; there was no 
one of them which might not have emanated from the clergy 
themselves. 

Beyond the walls of Westminster, however, the reform move- 
ment was rapidly assuming volume and strength, soon to place 

it beyond the power of king or parliament to control. 
ExtenMonof The revolt of England was in fact developing along 
movement. three distinct but converging lines: First, the king 

was moving toward a declaration of the complete inde- 
pendei:ice of the English Church and the reorganization of the 
English ecclesiastical system upon a purely national basis; second, 
the parliament was interested in the reform of those joractices of 
the church which distressed the laity in particular; but tliird, a 
far more serious threat to the established order, there was a 
rapidly increasing body of people, thoughtful and devout, but 
active and determined, who had caught their inspiration from 
Luther and his followers, possibly from some lingering fires of 
Lollardy, and had begun an attack upon the whole system of 
accepted church doctrine, Their position was a strong one, for 



1524-1530] WILLIAM TTNDALE 537 

they represented the quickening conscience of England, the pro- 
test of the better thought of the people against the irreligion and 
heartless materialism of the age, with which unfortunately the 
clerical body in the interests of their special, privileges and their 
vast wealth had suffered themselves to be identified. 

Of the leaders of this third movement, the most important was 
William Tyndale, who had been a student at the great English 

universities and there come under the influence of the 
Tyndale and . tt • , • ,• t ■ -, 

the English new leamms. His active, practical miiid very early 
Scvivtuves, j *j 

conceived the idea of giving the results of the ripened 
scholarship of the age to the people in the form of an accurate 
translation of the Scriptures. He soon became satisfied, however, 
that such a work could not be done in England in the present 
mood of the clergy, and in 1524 went to the continent, where he 
met Luther at Wittenberg and finally settled down at Cologne. 
But here the town authorities made trouble for him and he was 
forced to retire to Worms where in 1526 he finished the octavo 
edition of his New Testament, and sent over some three thousand 
copies to be distributed in England. The translation of the Pen- 
tateuch followed in 1530. The friends of Tyndale in the mean- 
time had organized an "Association of Christian Brothers" 
who made it their task to bring his translations into direct contact 
with the people by a wide distribution. They were circulated 
with tracts of Tyndale, Frith, and Barnes, "three worthy martyrs 
and principal teachers of the Church of England." 

Henry had no sympathy with this phase of the reform, for he 

hated Luther with all the intolerance of a narrow and obstinate 

mind and was snspicioas of everything that smacked of 

A-ttitudc of ./ o 

the govern- the Lutheran flavor. The bishops also had been quick 

menttotvard , « m t i 

the religions to take alarm at the appearance of Tyndale s New 

Testament and published their disapproval of his trans- 
lations. But while Wolsey remained in power, he had stayed their 
hands from offering personal violence to the men who were thus 
using the Scriptures to undermine the authority of the church. 
More, however, whose legal training perhaps had inspired in his 
mind a*respect for law above the simple dictates of humanity, and 
who possibly, also, felt the need of vindicating the political reform 



538 THE ECCLESIASTICAL REVOLT OF ENGLAND [henky Vin. 

with which he was in sympathy from the charge of any complicity 
in the attack on the doctrines of the church, marshalled all the 
machinery of government against the "Christian Brothers" and 
began a vigorous attempt to uproot the spreading heresies. He 
had, moreover, already drawn the sword of controversy and had 
upheld the doctrine of Purgatory against Tyndale and others in a 
tract called the "Supplication of Souls." While the king, there- 
fore, still bent upon his divorce, was striving to frighten the pope 
into compliance by the threat of severing the ecclesiastical system 
of England from that of the continent, while the parliament was 
seeking to relieve the people from the burdens of mortuaries and 
the neglect of pluralists. More had lighted the fires at Smithfield 
and begun sending the clearest sighted advocates of the reform to 
the stake. 

Between Henry and the pope matters had speedily come to a 
deadlock. The pope refused to be bullied and announced his 

determination not to yield; Henry at a loss as to the 
tothTimi^ next stepj yet fully determined as ever to have his way, 

appealed to the universities of Europe for an opinion 
upon the crucial question, whether the pope was competent to 
allow a man to marry his deceased brother's widow; that is. Was 
a Papal Bull superior to the plain declaration of the Scriptures? 
The universities took up the question, and amused themselves 
with it after their ponderous fashion, and finally gave a decision, 
each in accordance with the political preferences of their respec- 
tive sovereigns, and so settled nothing. After three years more of 
vexatious waiting, Henry found that he was no nearer his goal 

than ever, and turned again to his Eeform Parliament 
Further act^ for comfort, seeking through it to renew his attack 
formPariia- upon the popc. In 1532 it abolished benefit of 

clergy for all beloAv the rank of deacon ; it also lim- 
ited to twenty years the period for which lands could be bur- 
dened with the obligation of paying for masses for the dead. 
Convocation was compelled to agree to constitute no new canons 
without the king's consent and to submit the existing law to a 
committee of revision made up of laymen and ecclesiastics. 
Then the parliament proceeded to threaten the pope more directly 



1533] THOMAS CRANMER 539 

by empowering Henry to suspend the payments of Peter's Pence 
and annates whenever he saw fit.^ 

Thus far while the Commons had been practically unanimous 
in its support of the king, in the Upper House the clergy by 

reason of their great strength had exerted a powerful 
'cranmer Conservative influence, so that at times the consent of 

the Lords to measures of reform had been secured only 
with great difficulty; but during the year Archbishop Warham 
died and Henry hastened to replace him by a very different man, 
Thomas Cranmer. This man, destined to give his life for the 
independence of the English Church, was the son of a gentleman 
of Aslacton, Nottinghamshire, where he was born July 2, 1489. 
He had entered Cambridge at fourteen, become a fellow in 1510, 
and had been ordained to the priesthood in 1523, but continued 
his connection with the university as a lecturer on divinity until 
1528. In this year by mere chance the young divine was thrown 
into the company of Gardiner and Fox, two of Henry's ministers, 
and modestly proposed to them the plan of laying Henry's diffi- 
culties before the universities. Henry with bluntness character- 
istic of the man ordered Cranmer to be sent for at once, declaring 
"this man I trow, has the right sow by the ear," and committed 
to him the presentation of his cause before the universities of 
Europe. Warham died while Cranmer was on the continent, 
and Henry named him for the vacant see. In vain Cranmer pro- 
tested that he had been disqualified by a recent marriage; Henry 
insisted, and upon Cranmer's return he was formally consecrated, 
March 30, 1533. 

Henry now had an ally in the place where one was most needed, 
and by his help proceeded at once to cut the troublesome knot 

presented by the Canon Law. At the beginning of 

Tlic divorce -l ^ cd i^ 

declared, 1533 parliament had formally abolished the riarht of 

1533. *^ o 

appeal from the English ecclesiastical court to Eome, 
and Cranmer by direction of the king at once took up the question 
of the divorce, and although Catharine denied the authority of the 
archbishop's court, the marriage was straightway declared illegal. 
Henry had already married Anne Boleyn early in the year ; the 

^See Gee and Hardy, Docs., pp. 176-186. 



540 THE ECCLESIASTICAL REVOLT OF ENGLAND [hknrt VIII. 

marriage was now announced and the coronation of the new 
queen celebrated with a state and magnificence befitting the 
defiant mood of the king. 

The divorce and the marriage brought on the crisis. The 

pope annulled the findings of Cranmer's court and commanded 

Henry to put away Anne Boleyn before the end of 

Thecrisu, September under pain of excommunication. Even 

July 11, 1533. ^ ^ 

Henry paused before forcing this final issue. There 
was danger of an active interference on the part of Charles V. , 
when once the fatal bull should leave the Papal Curia. The 
hearts of the people of England had always been with Catharine, 
they had cheered her with uncovered heads and shouted "God 
bless her" as she passed to the place which had been fixed upon 
for her retirement. For Anne they had little sympathy, and 
even that soon passed to positive detestation as they better under- 
stood her character; nor were bold spirits lacking to protest 
openly against the conduct of the self-willed king. John Fisher, 
the venerable bishop of Rochester, who had been Catharine's 
chaplain, had boldly spoken out for her at the first trial before 
Campeggio and Wolsey, and in 1532 Sir Thomas More had thrown 
up the seals of his office and retired from public life, rather than 
be a party to the apostasy of England. Stubborn as Henry was 
he could not be oblivious to the contempt of men whom he had 
once admired and respected with all the ingenuousness of youth. 
Yet Henry had no thought of submission ; he would appeal to a 
general council of the church first; he would form another 
league to defend himself against the emissaries of this mad pope, 
but submit? Never ! It was in this temper that he was brought at 
last completely under the influence of men like Cranmer and 
Cromwell who were bent upon forcing the separation from Eome 
and who now easily led him to face the alternative, and answer 
threat with threat : If the pope did not cancel his decree within 
nine weeks, Henry would declare the complete independence of 
England of the papal system. 

At last the fateful month of September opened. On the 11th 
the queen gave birth to a daughter whom they christened after 
Henry's mother Elizabeth. It was a daughter in spite of the pre- 



1533, 1534] THE ACT OF SUPREMACY ' 541 

dictions of astrologers and wizards, but the friends of Henry 
determined to make the best of it. In the spring parliament 

passed an Act of Succession ^ which settled the crown 
EUzabeth " ^^poii the children of Henry and Anne, and in the autumn 
f/^il^^^* interpreted it by a second act which further authorized 

Henry to compel his subjects to take an oath to sup- 
port the Act of Succession. Any one, moreover, who should 
utter a word to the disparagement of the king's marriage or of 
his heirs, should be guilty of misprision of treason and be liable to 
complete forfeiture of goods and imprisonment during the king's 
pleasure. More and Fisher refused to take the oath. Fisher 
was already in the Tower and More was sent to join him. 

In the meanwhile the pope had refused to cancel his decree, 
and nothing was left for Henry, unless he would retire from the 

conflict and restore his injured wife, but to take the 
Supnmafy ^^^^ stej). Accordingly, March 31, 1534 the convoca- 
Nnvember, -f^JQ^]^ gf Canterbury abjured the papal supremacy; the 

convocation of York passed a similar decree before 
May 15; and in November parliament formally decreed that the 
king was to be henceforth accounted "the only supreme head on 
earth of the Church of England called Anglicana Ecclesia.'''' 
This act, the famous Act of Supremacy,^ the English Declaration 
of Independence, closes the long series of anti-papal legislation 
which began with the first Statute of Praemunire in 1353, and 
now definitely sundered England from the ancient ecclesiastical 
system of Europe.^ 

In order to reconstitute the church it was necessary further to 
pass supplementary acts which also date from this eventful year 
The corolla- ^"^^ ^^^^ ^® regarded as corollaries of the Act of 
AftofSu- Supremacy. By these the annates were added to the 
prem'acy. regular revenues of the crown,* the king was empow- 



1 Gee and Hardy, pp. 232-243 and 244-247. 

2 Gee and Hardy, pp. 243, 244 and pp. 251, 252. 

^ For other important acts of this eventful year, see Gee and Hardy, 
pp. 195-257. 

* They were afterward, in the reign of Queen Anne, set apart for the 
increase of the revenues of poor livings. 



642 T'HE ECCLESIASTICAL REVOLT OF ENGLAND [henry viil. 

ered to nominate bishops, and the chapter enjoined to elect his 

nominees nnder the penalties of Praemunire. Cromwell' although 

a layman was named vicar general of the kingdom, 

Therecon- q^ position wliicli made him president of convocation 

^titutmn of i ^ 

Ch rc^^'*'*^ ^^^^ brought the legislative power of that body directly 
under the king's control. All the bishops of England, 
also, were suspended that they might be reappointed under the 
new law. No attempt, however, was yet made to change the doc- 
trines of the church. The pope was no longer recognized, but 
the English Church was still Catholic in local government, worship, 
and doctrine. 

'J'he Act of Supremacy was received generally without opposi- 
tion. The Carthusian monks of the London Charter House 
dared to protest, and twelve of them were promptly 
the Act of hanged as a warning to others who might be of their 

Supremacy. £ ,1 ■ ^ • ni- 1 • • i i 

way ot thinking. More shining marks, however, were 
offered by the two distinguished prisoners in the Tower, Fisher 
and More. Fisher had begun his career as confessor of Margaret 
Beaufort, the mother of Henry VII., and had faithfully served 
the Tudors for three generations. Few men had exerted a wider 
or nobler influence. The other victim was a typical product of' 
the Eenaissance. Born in 1478, the son of a crown justice, he 
was early bred to the law. At Oxford he came under the influ- 
ence of Colet and Erasmus, and became deeply imbued with the 
spirit of the newer criticism. The "Utopia," a sort of sixteenth 
century "Looking Backward," which sought to expose the evils 
of the existing order, and at the same time to set forth an ideal 
community to be found somewhere in "no man's land," entitled 
More to a fair place in literature. He also won quite a rejDutation 
as a lawyer, and as speaker of the House of Commons sufficiently 
proved his spirit by boldly attacking Wolsey, when Wolsey was in 
the heyday of his power. Henry at one time was very fond of 
More, whose refinement, ready wit, and gracious open nature made 
him altogether a very lovable character, and now really desired to 
save his old friend. But More had raised an issue not with Henry 
alone, but with the whole drift of the last ten years of English 
history, and Henry was powerless ; the grim logic of his position 



1535] THOMAS CROMWELL 543 

virtually forced him to destroy these the truest friends of his 
youth, the noblest ornaments of his reign. As to More and Fisher 
there are no sublimer instances of heroic devotion to conscience 
in all history: without the support of the enthusiasm of the 
martyr, without the sympathy of a powerful following who might 
look to them for example and inspiration in devotion, with their 
eyes open, they yet went deliberately to the block rather than 
deny what they felt to be truth. Fisher was executed on June 
22, 1535, and More on July 6, following. 

It is now time to notice the man who perhaps more than any 
other is responsible for the later acts of Henry, Thomas Crom- 
well, "The Hammer of the Monks," and "the first 

TllOTYlQ/S 

Cromwell, great English Secretary of State." He was born at 
merofthc Putney in the year of Bosworth, the son of an iron- 

Monks." 

master. Alter spendmg some years abroad as a soldier 
in Italy, and as a merchant in Antwerp, he returned to London to 
begin business as an attorney, money lender, and wool speculator. 
Here he fell in with Wolsey and entered into his employ, collect- 
ing the revenues of the archi episcopal see of York and also con- 
ducting the various matters connected with the dissolution of the 
monasteries and the founding of Wolsey's college at Oxford. 
After Wolsey's fall he entered directly into the service of the king 
and soon became one of his most influential ministers. He was 
able, industrious, resolute, and self-willed. He can hardly be 
called a Protestant, for he probably had no personal religion ; he 
favored the divorce and did not hesitate to push the king on to a 
separation with Rome in order to attain it. He managed the 
parliament in the king's interests, ruled in the Privy Council, and 
fell heir to all the bitter hatred which the nobles once felt for 
Wolsey. 

Cromwell's early experience in Wolsey's service had brought 
him into contact with the life of the monasteries upon their most 

unattractive side ; and it was not difficult for him to 
Cromtvelland i tt ^i .l ^i t i n , ,-, ■ 

themonas- persuade Henry that tney were useless and that their 
teries. j j 

wealth ought to be brought under the control of the 

crown. As a preliminary move, no doubt designed to justify the 
meditated spoliation, he sent out a commission in 1535 to visit the 



544 THE ECCLESIASTICAL REVOLT OF ENGLAND [henky vill. 

various houses and report on their condition. The report, known 
as the "Black Book of Monasteries," was ready when parliament 
met the next year, and upon its representations parliament deter- 
mined to abolish all but about thirty of the larger houses upon 
which the commission had reported favorably. The others to the 
number of 376 were abolished and their estates confiscated for the 
crown. The inmates were free to enter one of the larger houses, 
or to abandon the monastic life. To such as chose the latter a 
pension was allowed, equal to the income of a common parish 
priest. 

While Henry was thus ploughing his way at home, ruthlessly 

overturning the traditions of a thousand years, Europe looked on 

aghast. The executions of More and Fisher were 

rest. Risimjs received with deep disapproval even by the Germans, 

in the north. i t ,i t^ t i ^ 

who regardea the Jiingiisli movement as a spurious 

reformation, drawing its inspiration from politics and trade rather 
than religion. The pope, also, set about preparing his bull of 
deposition ; even Francis had turned against Henry, and could he 
and Charles ever agree to act in harmony, a league of western Europe 
for the vindication of the church and the overthrow of the mad 
king of England might become a possibility. England also was 
uneasy. The unrest had begun to manifest itself in various 
ways. An epileptic nun had appeared in Kent, who predicted the 
king's speedy death, and had deceived even Fisher by her spuri- 
ous revelations. She was executed in 1534; her fall had been the 
occasion of Fisher's original imprisonment in the Tower. In 1535 
intrigue was prevalent and serious outbreak threatened; but the 
death of Catharine the next year, by removing the hope of those 
who were expecting Charles to interfere, greatly diminished the 
danger of any possible outbreak. The people, however, particularly 
in the north, were becoming embittered by a series of special 
grievances, some real but most of them fancied, growing 
partly out of the attack upon the monasteries, partly out 
of the unpopularity of Cromwell with the nobility, partly out of 
an unfortunate law known as the Statute of Uses which pre- 
vented landowners from making charges on their estates for 
the benefit of younger sons or daughters, partly out of the cus- 



1530] THE PILGRIMAGE OF GRACE 545 

torn of calling suits to London for a hearing instead of allowing 
them to he settled at the county courts, and partly out of the 
increasing displacement of agriculture hy sheep farming. A 
series of revolts broke out in October of 1536 and con- 
ape of tinned through the winter, extending over Lincoln- 

shire, Yorkshire, Cumberland, and Westmoreland, 
in which the clergy, the nobles, the gentry, and landless poor 
were generally implicated. The revolt in Yorkshire, known 
as the "Pilgrimage of Grace," became really formidable, and 
although it also failed and the leaders, among whom were 
the abbots of Fountains, Jervaulx, Barlings, and Sawley, 
were put to death, the protest was not altogether lost. The 
hated Statute of Uses still remained on the statute books but 
the courts interpreted the law more generously. A special com- 
mittee of the Privy Council, known as the Council of 
The Council the North, were also appointed to try cases such as 
created, 1537. were Ordinarily brought to London, holding sittings 
during four months of each year in the cities beyond 
the Ilumber. The president of the council was virtually governor 
in the north in the king's name. 

The northern risings had failed not because of any lack of 
people, for at one time some thousands were actually in arms, 
but because the insurgents could not find a claimant 
New Yorkist ^q gg|^ ^^p against Henry about whom the disaffected 
elements might rally. In 1538, however, the govern- 
ment suddenly became aware of a widely extended plot, which 
centered in the two Yorkist families of the Poles and the Cour- 
tenays. Henry Courtenay was the grandson of Edward IV. by 
his daughter Catharine. He was marquis of Exeter and possessed 
great power in the west. The Poles were represented by the sons 
of that Reginald Pole who had been killed at Pavia in 1525 and 
Margaret, the daughter of the duke of Clarence, the countess of 
Salisbury. The eldest son was Henry, Lord Montague, a warm 
friend of the marquis of Exeter, and married to a Neville. The 
second son was Eeginald Pole who had entered the church and 
was once a great favorite with the king. At first he had been in 
sympathy with the divorce, but like More and Fisher had refused 



546 THE ECCLESIASTICAL REVOLT OF ENGLAND [henry viii. 

to follow Henry in seceding from the great ecclesiastical family of 
Europe and had written a treatise upon "Ecclesiastical Unity." 
The pope was pleased and made the author a cardinal. Henry 
was not pleased and had the author attainted. The exact extent 
of the plot is not known or the degree in which the several leaders 
were implicated. The cardinal had entered the pope's service and 
was his trusted messenger in his endeavor to rouse Charles V. to 
draw the sword against England. The marquis of Exeter had 
assisted the king in suppressing the ' ' Pilgrimage of Grace' ' but had 
openly avowed his distaste for the business. Some treasonable prep- 
arations, also, were unearthed in Cornwall. A younger Pole, 
Geoffrey, offered evidence against his eldest brother and his 
mother, the venerable countess of Salisbury, who were probably 
more or less in correspondence with the exiled cardinal. It was 
known also that Charles was gathering a mysterious fleet of two 
hundred sail in the Schelde. Henry acted with his usual ruthless 
energy. Exeter and Montague were beheaded and Lady Salisbury 
was sent to the Tower, although she was not put to death until 
1541. 

The risings led directly to the suppression of the remaining 

monasteries. The work began in 1536 in the voluntary surrender 

of the great House of Furness. Other houses followed 

Suppression . 

of the great the example 01 Furness when it was known that the 

'in\0'YhCLStj€'T"t€/'^ 

king stood ready to make liberal provisions for the 
future support of the inmates. Their chattels were sold and 
their lands, yielding a revenue estimated at £6,000,000, were turned 
over to the king. 

Here was an enormous wealth placed in the hands of the gov- 
ernment, but the keen politicians who surrounded Henry were at no 

loss as to its disposal ; they proposed to forestall reaction 
tlieiands % ^^ making the nation a partner with the government in 
teries''""*" ^^^^ spoliation of the church. A part was applied to the 

creation of six new bishoprics ; a part was used in coast 
fortifications; a yet greater part passed into the hands of the new 
families, the Russells, the Seymours, the Dudleys, the Cecils, and 
the Cavendishes, the new reform nobility whom Henry had called 
around him as a balance to the old nobility ; but the greatest part 



1536] DISPOSAL OF CHURCH LANDS 547 

went out in small holdings, sold off for a song to the neighboring 
gentry, so that twenty years later when the reaction came in 
under Mary and her advisers talked of restoring the monasteries, 
it was said that more than twenty thousand families were inter- 
ested in the retention of these lands. Nothing could have been 
devised more certain to fix permanently the results of Henry's 
reforms. In another way also the supjoression of the monasteries 
strengthened the government by removing the abbots from the 
House of Lords, and thereby assuring the lay element of a per- 
manent majority over the spiritual peers. ^ Henry, also, was care- 
ful to select for his six new bishoprics men upon whose sympathies 
he could depend. 

With the suppression of the monastic houses, the establish- 
ment of a lay majority in the House of Lords, and the passing 
away of all possibility of foreign military interference, the political 
revolt from Rome may be regarded as accomplished. The doc- 
trinal revolt was yet to come. 

^ See Stubbs, Lectures on Mediaeval and Modern History, pp. 309 and 
310. It seems that while the spiritual lords had always been in a numer- 
ical majority up to the dissolution of the monasteries, yet so far as actual 
daily attendance was concerned, as shown by the records of each session, 
the voting strength of the two elements was commonly more nearly 
equal. 



CHAPTER IV 



THE PROGRESS OF THE REFORM 



HENRY VIIL, 1539-1547 
EDWARD II., 15i5-lb53 



THE HOWARDS 





• John Howard, Duke of Norfolk, 




supporterof Richard III., 




killed at Bosworth, 14S5 

1 




Thomas. Earl of Surrey; 




latei 


. Duke of Norfolk, 




Thoi 


victor at Floddeu, 1513. Died 1524 




1 
nas, Duke of Admiral Edward 


i ! 
Edmund William, 


Elizabeth =Thomas 




Norfolk, Howard, killed 


Howard Lord Howard 


Howard 1 Boleyn 




d 1554 in 1513 


1 of Effingham 


1 






Catharine | 


Anne Boleyn 


Henry, Earl of Surrey, 


Howard, Admiral Charles 


Henry VlII.'s 


Ex. by Henry 


Henry VlII.'s Howard of the 


second wife, 


Vlfl., 1547 


fifth wife, Armada Epoch. 
Ex. 1543 Created Earl of 


Ex. 1536 

1 


Thomas, Duke of 


Nottingham 1590, 


Elizabeth, 


Norfolk, Ex. 1573 


d. 1634 


Queen of Eng- 








land, 1558-1603 



At the beginning of the year 1539 Henry was as determined as 

ever that the doctrines and practices of the Enghsh Church should 

not "vary in any iot from the faith Catholic." But by 
The schism .j .j o ^ 

in the reform the Act of Supremacy he had opened the flood gates, 

lOdTrtjii " 

and all the tremendous power of the government could 
not close them again. As early as 1536 the ministers of the 
church had felt the pressure of the growing dissatisfaction and in 
order to meet the objections of educated people, and reach some 
common ground of agreement with those who were beginning to 
question the teaching of the church, by the authority of convoca- 
tion had published a series of articles, ten in number, 
^'leTejj, in which they declared that the Bible and the "three 
creeds"^ were sole authority for all matters of faith, 
and explained and enjoined as necessary to salvation the three 
sacraments, — baptism, penance, and the sacrament of the altar. 

^The Apostles', the Nicene, and the Athanasiaii. 

548 



1539] THE SIX AETICLES 549 

The logical sequence of an appeal to the authority of Scriptures, 
moreover, was a ,demaud for the Scriptures themselves, and in 
1539, convocation authorized, also, and ordered to be placed 

in each church, a version known as the "Great Bible." 
mbie^issl ^^^^^ ^^^ ^0^ strictly a new version, but was founded 

upon the work of Tyndale and Coverdale, Tyndale's 
fellow in exile, who had published the first complete translation 
of the Scriptures in English in 1535, the year before the burning 
of Tyndale at Vilvorde. The "Great Bible" was accompanied by 
an introduction from the pen of Cranmer. 

Here then was a distinct concession of the ministers of the 
church to the new learning; an authoritative acknowledgment of 

the claims of reason to a hearing as against the dog- 
AaUation niatic methods of medievalism, a public recognition of 

an authority superior to that of the priesthood. But 
there was also a vast body of smaller folk, radicals of excitable 
nature, to whom an appeal to reason meant an appeal to license, 
and who thought that the abjuration of the papal supremacy per- 
mitted them to begin at once an open and violent attack upon the 
doctrines and practices of the church. The ministers of the 
church felt their weakness and appealed to the king for protec- 
tion. When, therefore, the new parliament came together in 1539, 
it determined under the promptings of the Howards, who repre- 
sented the old nobility, to publish a formal statement of doctrines 
which were not to be questioned, and to put a stop to the unseemly 
agitation which had of late invaded the most solemn ceremonies 
of the church. The result was the famous Six Articles, which 
may be taken as a fair statement of the faith of the conservative 
party of reform at the time, as well as an expression of their 
temper. 

This "bloody act," as the radical reformers termed it, neither 
Catholic nor Protestant, reasserted the supremacy of the king as 

under God the head of "the whole church and congre- 
Tlie Six 
Articles, gation of England," but enioined the acceptance of 

June, 1539. o ■> J ^ r 

transubstantiation, communion in one kind, the 
celibacy of priests, the observance of "vows of chastity or widow- 
hood," the continuance of private masses, and the practice of 



550 THE PIIOGEESS OF THE REFORM [henry VIII. 

auricular confession. Death by fire was prescribed as tlie penalty 
for denying transubstantiation. Death was also prescribed, 
although not by fire, for teaching, or jsreaching, or maintaining in 
a public court, views contrary to the remaining articles; for pro- 
fessing such views in other ways, that is by printing, writing, or 
by word, for the first offense forfeiture was prescribed, and for 
the second offense death. For those who denied the articles by 
open act the penalties were likewise severe.^ The act was to go 
into effect "after the twelfth day of July." 

The Six Articles were a direct blow to the hopes of those who 

were in sympathy with the doctrinal reforms of the Lutherans and 

a warning of the serious nature of the resistance which 

Results of ■ 1 , -, , 1 rrn 1 • , 1 n n • n n 

the '.'Sfe,, miglit be expected. The king apparently had wished 
to temper the harshness of the law somewhat, but his 
sympathies with its purpose were so well known that little help 
was to be expected from him. Cranmer and Latimer had opposed 
the act in parliament, but Cranmer's timidity and Latimer's declin- 
ing influence forbade any expectation of shelter from this direction, 
now that the act had become law. Cromwell also had been more 
or less in sympathy with the attack upon the doctrines of the 
church, but he was too much of a politician to attempt to inter- 
fere where even the king had failed to soften the resentment of 
parliament against the agitators. He remained silent therefore 
while the reformation drew the sword against the reformation. 

If, however, Cromwell could not stay the tide which was bear- 
ing all before it in parliament, he could yet plan a bold stroke 
for saving the doctrinal reform. Henry had long since 
^^idiiif^ wearied of Anne Boleyn as he had v/earied of Catliar- 

lAitheran j^g ^^^fj j-^^d listened eagerly to rumors of gravest mis- 
alliance. ' _ & j to 

conduct which her enemies were doing all they could 
to spread. In the early part of 1536 she had been put through 
the farce of a trial in which torture was freely used in securing 
testimony, and, although she herself protested her innocence, a 
court of subservient peers condemned her to death. She was 
executed on May 19th, and on the 20th Henry married Jane 
Seymour, to make way for whom, he had been as eager to get rid 

' For the text of the Six Articles, see Gee and Hardy, pp. 303-319. 



153G-1540] CROMWELL AND THE LUTHERAN ALLIANCE 551 

of the unhappy Anne as he had ever been to get rid of Catharine. 
But the blight which had rested on Henry's domestic life, was 
not to be dispelled. The new queen died October 20, 1537, 
having survived her predecessor little more than a year. On the 
12th, however, she had given birth to the long-expected heir, after- 
wards known as Edward VI., and as both Catharine and Anne 
Boleyn were dead at the time of Henry's third marriage, no 
legal objection could be raised to the right of the young prince to 
succeed to his father's throne. Thus the question which had so 
long vexed Henry's mind had been at last settled. After the 
death of his third queen Henry had remained unmarried for two 
years; yet he had not been so disconsolate that he 

JTcJirii's 

fourth could not amuse himself over the various schemes of 

his ministers for finding another candidate for the 
dangerous post. For the nation these had been years of great 
moment. Cromwell was then at the height of his power; his ax 
dripped with the blood of the Poles and the Courtenays; the 
proudest of the old Catholic nobility v/ere swept away; the 
monasteries were suppressed ; the Ten Articles were put forth by 
convocation and the Great Bible was published. Apparently the 
reform was carrying all before it. Then the reaction spoke in the 
Six Articles, and Cromwell, who had gone too far to trim to the 
shifting wind, saw that only a bold step would save his work. 
If an alliance could be made between Henry and Francis 
and the league of German princes which had been formed at 
Schmalkalden in 1530 for protection against the emperor, then 
England need have no fear of an invasion by Charles ; and if in 
addition, Henry could be induced to forget his obstinate hatred 
of the Lutherans, to enter into a marriage alliance with some one 
of the powerful German houses of the reform party, the wily 
minister might hope effectually to counteract the growing influ- 
ence of the men who had engineered the Six Articles through 
parliament. This was Cromwell's plan, and he so far succeeded 
as to get Henry's consent to a marriage with Anne, the sister of 
the duke of Cleves, an important prince of the lower Ehine. 
Henry was not at all pleased with his bride ; it is said that his 
consternation was so great when he first beheld the plain, expres- 



552 THE PKOGRESS OF THE REFORM [henry Vlli. 

sionless face, deeply pitted with smallpox, that he could not utter 
a word, and forgot altogether to take from his pocket the present 
which he had brought. Yet he could not draw back, for it would 
not do to offend the duke of Cleves upon whom the furtherance 
of the alliance with Francis rested. The marriage, therefore, in 
spite of the king's disgust was duly celebrated, January 6, 1540. 
Then for a time matters moved smoothly for Cromwell ; appar- 
ently he was more powerful than ever; the enforcement of 
the Six Articles was suspended, the force of the reaction was 
stayed. 

But Cromwell was playing a dangerous game and the odds 
were heavy against him. First Francis definitely announced that 
he would not join the Protestant league; then the Ger- 
CromweU, man princes hastened to make their own terms with 
the emperor. Cromwell's fine scheme had collapsed 
and Henry found himself left out in the cold, with a fright of a 
wife on his hands. The enemies of Cromwell, the old conservative 
nobility, saw their opportunity and proceeded to make the most of 
it, doing all they could to quicken Henry's disgust and turn his 
wrath upon the luckless minister. Convocation was ordered to 
declare the marriage null ; Cromwell was arrested on a charge of 
treason, condemned unheard by an Act of Attainder, and hurried 
to the block. 

The fall of Cromwell was the signal that Henry had thrown 
himself into the arms of the party of reaction. The political 
head of this party was Thomas Howard, the duke of 
reacti/m. Norfolk. He had fought by the side of his father at 
Henry and Floddcu ; his brother Edward Howard, the Lord High 
Howard, Admiral, had been killed in action at sea in the king's 
service, — something unique in the history of Lord High 
Admirals. Duke Thomas had been prominent in the active hos- 
tility of the old nobility to Wolsey and had seen his schemes of 
family aggrandizement succeed in the coronation of his niece 
Anne Boleyn as Queen of England, but only to be thwarted again 
by the counter plotting of Cromwell. Yet he had saved himself in 
the fall of the unfortunate Anne, bided his time, and now again 
saw a second great minister hurled from his lofty height while 



1543] SECOND PERIOD OF HOWARD INFLUENCE 553 

a second niece, Catharine, the daughter of his brother Edmund, 
became Queen of England. 

The enemies of the doctrinal reform well understood what was 
meant by the failure of Cromwell's scheme of a Protestant alli- 
ance, and set to work in serious earnest to enforce the 
'^cri/jdof'^ Six Articles, with grim impartiality hurdling to Smith- 
imfiuenec ^Q^^ the deniers of the royal supremacy and the 
deniers of the doctrine of transubstantiation. For- 
tunately, however, the triumph of the Howards was short. 
Within two years Catharine Howard had followed her cousin 
Anne Boleyn to the block and upon a similar charge. Yet the 
reform did not at once recover the lost ground. Henry was not 
inclined to tamper farther with doctrinal matters but preferred to 
keep things as they were. Cranmer, also, had lost prestige in 
the fall of Cromwell. Latimer^ the bishop of Ely, who had 
been the most sincere among the advisers of Henry in helping on 
the doctrinal reform, had resigned on the passage of the Six 
Articles, leaving Stephen Gardiner, the bishop of Winchester, a 
bold and honest advocate of the old doctrines, to direct Henry as 
his chief ecclesiastical adviser. It was his policy to undermine 
Cranmer and oppose all further innovations. 

A year after the death of Catharine Howard Henry married 

for the sixth and last time. The bride was Catharine Parr, whose 

discretion enabled her to please her lord and keep her 

sixth mar- head on her shoulders during the remaining years of 
riage, Cath- ^ . . ^^ . ■.-, , ,../.._ 

arineParr, his reign, ihe marriage was without political signifi- 
cance. 
While the events of these years were changing the whole future 
of English history, no less important and far-reaching changes 
were taking place in other parts of Britain, and behind 
The Tudor the green shores of its neighbor across the Irish Sea. 
Waie&, 1536. Wales had been virtually a part of England since the 
reign of Edward I. but the border counties had been 
retained in semi-independence, nor had Wales or Chester yet been 
allowed a representation in parliament. Henry abolished the sepa- 
rate jurisdiction of the marcher lords, enlarging the Welsh shires 
and adding five new ones. He also gave Wales twenty-four repre- 



554 THE PROGRESS OF THE REFORM [iie.nby vni. 

sentatives in parliament, and Chester four, and establislied at 
Ludlow a separate council of government, similar to that which 
he established north of the Humber the next year. 

Flodden had so crippled Scotland that the Scots had been able 
to do little harm to England during the minority of James V. The 
hostility of the clergy to Henry's church policy, how- 
ever, had greatly strengthened the old French party at 
the Scottish court, under whose influence the young king had at 
last reached man's estate. In 1537, in spite of all attempts of 
Henry to win his nephew's confidence, James had definitely com- 
mitted himself to the French party by marrying Magdalen, the 
daughter of the French king, and although the new queen lived 
only a few months, the alliance was renewed the next year by a 
marriage Avith Mary of the powerful family of Guise. Henry, 
notwithstanding, had still sought to win the favor of his Scottish 
kinsman, but in 1540 a refusal of James to meet him for a confer- 
ence satisfied him that Scotland must be counted among his 
enemies. In the months which followed Cromwell's fall, also, 
Henry's relations to Francis were becoming every day more 
strained, and he determined by striking first to anticipate the 
support which James was certain to give the French in case of 
war. In 1542, therefore, he sent Thomas Howard to invade the 
country, but gained nothing save to bring a raid of Scots into 
England in reply. The Scottish nobles, however, who were 
divided among themselves, gave the raid only a half-hearted sup- 
port, and the whole northern army, some ten thousand strong, dis- 
gracefully fled at the ajiproach of a few hundred border farmers. 
This affair of Solway Moss broke the heart of the proud young 
king of Scots; he survived his humiliation only a few days, 
leaving the crown to an infant daughter a week old. The 
announcement that he had an heir to his crown brought no cheer 
to the dying king. "The deil take it," he exclaimed, "it came 
with a lass and it will go with a lass I" ^ The "lass" was Mary 
Stuart. 

In Ireland Henry was pursuing his way with characteristic 
ruthlessness. In 1534 the Fitzgeralds broke out in open revolt, 

1 Green, vol. II., p. 210. 



1535-1543 ] HENRY VIII. AND IRELAND 555 

occasioned by the arrest of the earl of Kildare. In 1535 Sir 

Leonard Grey suppressed the revolt, and Henry proceeded to hunt 

out and destroy every male of the Fitzgerald family. 

VIII. and The Irish parliament, which since the Poyninffs Acts 

Ireland. ./ o 

had remained under the control of the English 
council, supported Henry even to the recognition of his supremacy 
over the church, forbidding the use of the Irish language, the 
Irish dress, and the Irish fashion of wearing the hair. Monaster- 
ies were abolished ; relics and images were destroyed and English- 
sj)eaking priests were put in charge of the churches. For the 
moment Henry was everywhere successful. In 1539 he had pos- 
session of most of 1?he island, and in 1541 he changed his title 
from "Lord" to "King of Ireland." Henry rewarded the Irish 
chiefs who supported him by giving them English titles and the 
plunder of the Irish monasteries. 

In 1543 the long-expected war with France broke out and, 
curiously enough, the ally of Henry was the emjaeror. Charles was 

too good a politician to allow the memory of the wrongs 
'War with wliicli had been heaped upon the unfortunate Catharine, 

or the Avayward religious ideas of Henry, to debar him 
from the advantage of a proffered alliance against his old enemy 
of France. In England the overthrow of Cromwell and the 
increase of the power of the Catholic nobility naturally drew 
the country toward Charles, while the influence of Francis in 
Scotland and the repudiation of his earlier promises to Henry 
roused again the old latent animosity of the English against the 
French. Francis, moreover, had put himself outside the pale of 
sympathy of all Christendom, whether Catholic or Protestant, by 
making a formal alliance with the Turk. Even Protestant Ger- 
many drew back in horror from an alliance with a Christian prince 
who sent his fleets to help iVlgerian pirates in the sack of Christian 
cities, and at the Diet of Spires, 1543, voted 34,000 men and a 
general poll tax in order to assist the emperor in overthrowing 
the "two enemies" of Christendom. Henry sent a body of six 
thousand Englishmen to assist Charles on the German border, 
while he himself attempted to invade France in person. But 
Cliarles, true to his Spanish training, was as treacherous as ever, 



550 THE PROGRESS OP THE REFORM [henry viil. 

and while Henry was squandering the blood and treasure of his 
subjects before Boulogne, Charles was making a separate treaty 
with Francis at Crepy, in which Francis agreed to abandon the 
Turks and unite with Charles in a joint attack upon Protestant- 
ism. 

Henry in the meantime was left to struggle on alone, hoping 
to retain the paltry advantage which he had won. An army 

which he had dispatched into Scotland under Seymour 
Bouiogiw, and Dudley burned Leith and Edinburgh, but, beyond 

reading the Scots the old lesson, really accomplished 
■nothing. In the summer of 1545 the French made an unsuccess- 
ful attempt to secure a lodgement on the Isle of Wight and the 
coast of Sussex. Boulogne, which the English had taken in 1544, 
also resisted all attempts at recapture. It was possible, there- 
fore, for Henry to retire with some dignity, and in June 1546 he 
brought the useless war to a close by the treaty of Boulogne, in 
which he agreed to surrender the city to the French after eight 
years upon the payment of 5,000,000 francs. As usual in 
Henry's continental alliances he had been fooled and betrayed. 
He had won some advantages but had gained nothing commen- 
surate with the enormous debt in Avliich the war had involved his 
government. 

As soon as peace was assured the king turned his attention to 
his wasted treasury. The magnificent fund which his father had 

accumulated had been spent in the wars and fetes of 
cierinfj of the early years of his reign. Vast sums had poured into 

his treasury from the plunder of the church in Crom- 
well's days, but this treasure also had soon gone with the rest. 
Financial obligations, however, were trifling matters for a king 
who had so ruthlessly trampled upon far more sacred pledges. 
In 1545 he levied a benevolence, but this had produced only a 
small part of the enormous sum needed to satisfy the government 
creditors. Then Henry resorted to the dangerous expedient of 
tampering with the coinage, reducing the quantity of silver in an 
ounce of coin first to ten pennyweight and finally to six. In this 
way Henry was enabled to balance his accounts with his creditors, 
but with most disastrous eifects upon the commercial prosperity 



1536-1546] BREAK IN THE REEOEM PARTY 557 

of the kingdom. The old coins of the realm rapidly passed out 
of circulation; commercial transactions with foreign countries 
became almost impossible ; prices rose rapidly, while those who 
depended upon wages or fixed incomes were- thrown into great 
distress. To add to the confusion Henry discovered a new source 
of plunder in the confiscation of the chantries, hospitals, colleges, 
and gilds which piety had once founded, and whose wealth still lay 
in the control of the church ; and to the vast throng who had 
been set adrift by the sequestrations of Cromwell, to the greater 
number who could no longer earn a living at the old wage scale, 
were now added still another throng of starving idlers, further to 
depress the wages of the employed and fill the country with beg- 
gary and robbery and the cities with crime and wretchedness. 

In the meanwhile the breach between the two wings- of the 
reform was constantly widening. The act of 1536 which had 

given to the church the Creeds, the Ten Command- 
Widming ments, and the Lord's Prayer in English, had been a 
reform party, great advance. The publication and authorization of 

the Great Bible had been a further advance. But 
since the fall of Cromwell the Six Articles had held their bloody 
sway, and in 1543 Gardiner led a direct attack upon the English 
Bible, forbidding the reading of it to "husbandmen, artificers, 
and journeymen, and to all women except gentlewomen." In 
1546 the heresy hunters even invaded the queen's private circle 
and carried off to the stake her friend, the gentle Anne Askew. 

In 1546, however, the influence of the reactionaries had once 
more begun to wane. Henry had again attacked the church in 

the interests of his depleted treasury. He was also 
rmcWmand growing suspicious of the Howards in the interests of 
Henry's Prince Edward. The old Cromwellian party were rep- 

reujn. resented by Edward Seymour, the earl of Hertford, the 

little prince's uncle, and by John Dudley, Lord Lisle, son of the 
finance minister of unsavory memory of Henry VII. 's time. 
^Fith them, in sympathy at least, also stood Cranmer whose won- 
derful skill in turning the time -hallowed Latin prayers of the 
church into pure and expressive English, had given the church its 
first English Litany in 1544. Cranmer lacked the moral courage 



558 THE PROGRESS OF THE REFORM [henry viii. 

ever to become a leader, but his position of archbishop was one of 
great influence, and he made a powerful second where bolder 
spirits led. For two years the king's health had been declining. 
His once magnificent constitution was breaking ; he had become 
so weak that he could no longer write his - name and was com- 
pelled to affix the royal assent to the acts of government by a 
stamp made for the purpose. Yet the spirit burned as fiercely as 
ever, and when he learned that Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, 
had quartered his arms with those of Edward the Confessor, indi- 
cating his direct descent from royal blood, the old wrath which 
had once been so terrible again blazed up. Surrey was 
Henrij viH., sent to the block, and his father Duke Thomas was also 
arrested and attainted the day of his son's execution. 
But the next day Henry died before the failing hand could seal 
the act which had condemned his last victim. 

The acts of Henry VIII. are the best commentary upon his 
character. Possibly in the beginning of his reign he was not at 
heart a bad man. He possessed, however, an inordinate 
of^Heimi^''^^^ vanity, an all-consuming self love, which under opposi- 
tion developed into a savage determination always to 
have his own way, come what might. Fortunately, or unfortu- 
nately, his quarrel with the church found a sympathetic echo in 
the national heart, estranged from the pope by an accumulation 
of grievances v*^hich dated back to the thirteenth century. Here 
lay the strength of a king, who at any other time would have been 
resisted, if not deposed by his people. He was also strong in the 
limits which he proposed to set to his work ; for Henry's idea of 
reform, undoubtedly, represented the exact length to which the 
average Englishman was prej)ared to go in breaking with the old 
system. Only so can we explain the acquiescence of the country 
in his brutality and his tyrannies. 

The political and social results of the reign were far-reaching; 
and yet for this Henry deserves possibly little credit. All Europe 
was advancing by leaps and bounds, and England in spite of her 
king was sure to enjoy her share of the new life. She had already 
passed from a feudal state to a modern nation before Henry began 
his reign ; her population, her wealth, her trade and commerce, 



1543] EDWARD VI. 559 

had placed her among the great powers of Europe. The nobles, 

also, had been shorn of political authority and the middle class 

was beginning to assume its place in the control of the 

The vciTt of 

Henry in the state. The influence of the church as a political or 

political and . , • t -, -, -i t t . , 

social remits social power in the nation had already waned, and with 

of Ilia reign. t -, „ • • n • ^ 

the loss of its influence it lost the power of protecting 
its great wealth from the first greedy hand that discovered the dan- 
gerous secret. Yet had Henry opposed the reform, had he set the 
machinery of the state to work to crush heresy in its first forms, 
as he undoubtedly would have done had he not run foul of the 
legatine court, it is not at all likely that the Reformation would 
have taken such firm root in England, at least in that generation. 
At the time of Henry's death, the son of Jane Seymour was in 
his tenth year. In character he was all that a prince should be, 

upright, devout, and seriously intent upon doing good. 

The one-sided training, however, to which he was sub- 
jected by his guardians, soon developed traces of his father's self- 
confidence, harshness, and want of feeling. He became bigoted 
and superstitiously devoted to doing the work of God as he under- 
stood it. The mind, moreover, forced by the unnatural work to 
which it was put, matured more rapidly than the body. There 
was something abnormal and unwholesome about this child with the 
cold, solemn face and high forehead, with the sickly undersized 
body, who shrank from the sports and companionships of child- 
hood, and preferred to spend his hours poring over stately vol- 
umes of theology, or discussing abstruse topics with the doctors of 
the church. There is something also deeply pathetic about this 
absolute little lord, who needed nothing so much as a mother; a 
peculiarly sensitive instrument, left to be strung and tuned and 
played upon by designing men who thought only of using him to 
carry out their wild schemes of reform, or to inaugurate an era of 
public plunder and spoliation. 

The death of Surrey and the arrest of Norfolk had left the 
radical reform party again in control of the council, and although 
Henry, in his desire to maintain the existing status, had sought 
in his will to balance the two parties against each other by refusing 
to give to either a control in the council, the changing temper of 



560 THE PROGRESS OF THE REFORM [edward VI. 

the nation, where under the grim tutelage of the Six Articles the 

reform party had waxed in numbers and strength, presented a 

temptation which such leaders as Seymour, the king's 

mour, Lord uncle, and Dudley could not resist. The council ac- 

PTOtCCtOV 

January' cordingly, paying little attention to the desire of the 
dead king, made Edward Seymour, the earl of Hert- 
ford, Lord Protector, and by empowering him to act even without 
the council, conferred upon him an authority almost regal. Two 
weeks later, under the virtuous pretense of carrying out the late 
king's wishes, they made Seymour Duke of Somerset, John Dudley 
Earl of Warwick, and rewarded other members of the council in 
the same way with titles and honors. This unseemly haste in title 
grabbing was an ominous beginning; even Wriothesley, the chan- 
cellor, who belonged to the party of Norfolk and Gardiner and who 
had protested against the establishment of the protectorate, was 
not above being advanced to the peerage as Earl of Southampton. 

The protector was undoubtedly a sincere man, a good soldier 
and of proved courage ; but he was also impetuous and conspicuously 
lacking in judgment. He belonged to that tactless 
Dangers school of politicians wlio are ever taking the second 
protector-ate. step before the first. Nor was he long in giving a sig- 
nal exhibition of his lack of that discretion which is the 
first quality of statesmanship. At the time of the death of Henry, 
England was at peace with all the world. But, as the winter so 
eventful for the cause of the Eeformation in Germany passed, more 
than one war-cloud, portentous of coming storm, drifted above 
the horizon. Francis followed Henry to the grave on March 31, 
and his successor, Henry II., showed alarming signs of intending 
to break the last treaty with England. The emperor also was 
steadily pushing his plans for the dispersion of the league of 
Schmalkalden, and had not only succeeded in detaching some of 
its members, but on the 22d of April had surprised the elector 
John Frederick at Muhlberg, routing his army and taking prisoner 
the elector himself. These events were far from England, and yet 
no one could doubt that with Protestant Germany crushed, the 
next object which Charles would attack would be England herself, 
provided Henry II. of France should permit it. 



1547] SOMERSET AND THE REFORM 561 

It was at all events a time for the protector to walk warily, to 

make friends and not enemies. Yet from the first he seemed bent 

upon makinff a great Catholic alliance of all Europe 

Blunders of 

the protector, against England possible. He offended the French by 
fortifying the harbor of Boulogne, contrary to the stipu- 
lations of the last treaty. He offended the Scots by imperiously 
demanding the fulfillment of a treaty which they had made with 
Henry VIII. in 1543, by which the Princess Mary was to marry 
Edward. And when the Scots refused to make good the agree- 
ment, he crossed the border and defeated them in a 

P'lTtTi'tC' 

cieugh, Sept. pitched battle at Musselburgh, or Pinkie Cleugh. The 

10 1547. a ' o 

victory brought great glory to the protector, making 
him the darling of the hour, but roused the whole Scottish nation 
where before there had been of late a growing sympathy with the 
English Eeformation, and ultimately brought about the marriage 
of the young queen of Scots with the Dauphin Francis, the very 
thing which this campaign was designed to avert. 

At home also the protector pursued a like heedless policy. Un- 
like the most of the politicians who surrounded him, he was sin- 
cerely devoted to the reform, but with blind indifference 
or'spoUcij to consequences he proposed to use the power of the 
government to secure at once what a cooler judgment 
would have waited for a decade at least to bring about. The 
chancellor Wriothesley, the new earl of Southampton, was 
excluded from the council. The bishops of England were com- 
pelled to accept a renewal of their commissions in the name of the 
new king to emphasize the fact that they were to look upon 
themselves as merely ordinary government officials. The old 
iconoclastic spirit, which had drawn down uj^on the reformers the 
vengeance of the reaction in the penalties of the Six Articles, had 
also begun to show itself soon after the death of Henry and the 
half-hearted way in which the council had proceeded against the 
first offenders had encouraged rather than checked its excesses. 
Finally the protector himself gave the sanction of government to 
such acts by issuing a formal order for the purification of the 
churches, and on May 4 announced a general visitation to take 
effect throughout England. The decorated windows were to be 



562 THE PROGRESS OF THE REFORM [edwarp VI. 

broken, the walls whitewashed, the images of saint or Savior to be 
destroyed. Bishops, also, were to be questioned as to their support 
of the various acts for the abolition of the papal authority and the 
establishment of the royal supremacy. Protests were made, but 
they were unheeded. Irresponsible mobs paraded the country 
roads tricked out in sacred vestments associated in the popular 
mind with the reverent worship of a thousand years. Images 
and pictures were dragged out and burned in the midst of blas- 
phemous- revelry. Everywhere the most inflammable doctrines 
were fearlessly preaclied. 

When, therefore, j^arliament met in November the radical 
reformers were in the ascendant. They were, moreover, aggres- 
sively energetic and knew exactly what they wanted. 
^i'-T'^w '"'^^'l f The great popularity of Somerset who had inst returned 
'tLtor''i547 fi^'Gsh from the laurels of Pinkie Cleugh, whose sym- 
pathy with the ultra reform party was well understood, 
was guarantee also that they would meet with very little resist- 
ance. Accordingly the Six Articles, the various bills of the 
Lancastrian period against Lollards, the treason acts of Henry 
VIII. which condemned a man to death for calling the king a 
heretic, were swept away. The profanation of the Eucharist was 
to be punished by fine and imprisonment, but communion in both 
kinds was enjoined, nor could the parish priest deny those who 
reverently desired to communicate. The shadow of authority in 
the election of bishops which Henry VIII. had left to dean and 
chapter, was also taken away. Bishops henceforth were to be com- 
missioned solely by the crown without any fiction of election. 

The towns generally were in sympathy with these radical meas- 
ures of council aud parliament ; the country, where new ideas natu- 
rally gain ground more slowly, at least acquiesced. The 

Mistakes of J t> & J ' , . j , , 

the. reform government, however, seemed bent upon making trouble 

politicians. n • ■, i> 

for itself, and proceeded to reenact the law ot lo45, 
thus placing at its disposal the property of the hospitals, colleges, 
and chantries throughout England which had escaped Henry VIII. ^ 
A great show was made of establishing new schools out of the pro- 

^ Oxford, Cambridge, Winchester, Eton, St. George's, and Windsor 
were exempted. 



1547] PLUlSTDEll OF THE CHUECH 563 

ceeds, but only eighteen or twenty were ever founded, and of these 
many were left upon such meagre foundations that they were prac- 
tically useless. Three hospitals also are to be ascribed to the 
munificence of the protectorate. In consequence the Reformation 
was seriously weakened at the very point where up to this moment 
its greatest strength lay. It had rested its case upon an appeal to 
human intelligence against the dogma of the church and therefore 
had encouraged education. But now the needs of the teachers 
were to be sacrificed to the needs of the politicians. Fifteen years 
later the speaker of the House of Commons complained that one 
hundred schools were wanting "which before that time had been." 
Even Oxford and Cambridge, whose foundations had been spared 
by the Act of 1547, felt the withering influence of this drying up 
of the sources of their student supply; "scarce an hundred stu- 
dents were left of a thousand." 

At this point it might be expected confiscations would stop. 
But the rapacious council turned next upon the bishoprics. Three 

of the six recently founded by Henry VIII. were abol- 
me^hurcfi ^^hed and their incomes appropriated. Other, bishops 

were compelled to surrender large portions of their 
lands or their revenues in order to escape confiscation. Church 
buildings were seized and converted to worldly uses; sometimes 
the buildings were razed and the site devoted to a palace for a 
friend of the government. St. Stephen's Chapel was turned into 
a hall for holding the meetings of parliament; the College of St. 
Martins le Grand was made into a tavern; Somerset proposed 
even to tear down the Confessor's venerable abbey at Westmin- 
ster. The influence of the clergy suffered as a matter of course. 
Men refused to honor those whom they no longer respected. 
Those who held the right of appointing to livings, advowson, 
sought to get their share of the plunder by exacting from the 
needy appointee, sometimes a lump sum, sometimes a ijercentage 
of the yearly tithes. The character of the clergy degenerated 
correspondingly. As a body they became less honorable, less scru- 
pulous, less learned. The good Bishop Latimer and others like him, 
who had unwittingly helped to raise this unclean spirit of plunder, 
looked on in dazed consternation. Latimer complained that the 



564 THE PKOGKESS OF THE EEFOEM [edwabd VI. 

clergy were forced to put themselves into gentlemen's houses and 
"serve as clerks of kitchens, surveyors, or receivers." But the 
work of plunder was not to stop here. The royal eagles had 
gorged to the full, but the carrion of less noble feather, vultures of 
every breed, must now be served and they also gathered to the 
banquet. Shrines and altar plate were stolen by base hands to find 
their way to the mint to be issued in the current coin. Chalices, 
jewels, bells, and ornaments, were appropriated by greedy vestrymen, 
and offered for public sale; pictures and furniture were carried off; 
chnrcli buildings were turned into stables, and horses and mules 
and kiue munched their straw in solemn silence under the stately 
arches of nave or choir loft. 

Cranmer in the meanwhile was exercising his peculiar gifts in 

bi'inging out an English prayer book in the hope of introduciug 

some order in the midst of the chaos by providing a 

The Prayer- uniform servicc. In this he was assisted by a commit- 

Book and the _ -^ _ 

ActofUni- Iqq of churchmen of whom Nicholas Eidley, the bishop 
formity, 1549. -^ ' ^ 

of Kochester, is perhaps the best known. The work 
received the approval of convocation and by the Act of Uniformity^ 
was sanctioned by parliament and substituted for the forms already 
in vogue. It was an adaptation of the old Missal, or Mass Book, 
and the Breviary, the book which contained the authorized prayers 
of the old church for the seven canonical hours. The treatment 
of the mass naturally puzzled the redactors. They finally decided 
upon a compromise, which as usual in such cases satisfied no one. 
They went too far to carry along those who hated the new changes, 
as Bishop Bonner, and not far enough to please those who denied 
the real Presence and the Encharistic sacrifice. It was necessary 
to hold another "royal visitation" in order to enforce the new 
service book. Bonner was deposed, and thrown into prison where 
he lingered until the death of Edward. 

Somerset had now been in control of the government for two 
years and the effect of his high-handed policy was beginning to be 
manifest upon all sides. The social disorders to which the later 
acts of Henry's reign had contributed, had increased; nor had the 
protector done aught to relieve the distress, save to modify some- 

1 Gee and Hardy, pp. 358-366. 



1549] POPULAR RISIJSTGS 565 

what the laws against vagrancy. The continued debasing of the 
coinage had also augmented the commercial distress, while the 

confiscation and breaking up of the foundations con- 
^mcUmi"^ "^ nected with the religious gilds had swelled the number of 

those who were thrown upon public charity for support. 
The increasing stringency, moreover, had reacted upon itself; 
those who employed servants attempted to retrench by cutting 
down the number; landlords also, in their effort to secure less 
costly methods of production, continued to enclose large areas for 
sheepwalks, thus swelling the ever-increasing multitude who were 
left to choose between beggary, robbery, and starvation. Rest- 
lessness increased rapidly; men ceased to respect a government, 
which existed only to impoverish them; they began to discredit 
the reform as the cause of all their misery; they decried the lead- 
ers, too many of whom had fattened upon the plunder of the 
church, as thieves and highwaymen. 

Among the Protestant leaders, moreover, there were not want- 
ing ambitious spirits who sought to take advantage of the unrest 

for their own profit. The first of these was Lord 
TMmL Sen- Thomas Seymour of Sudeley, who had grown jealous of 
Id'arch 1549 ^-"^^ brother's power and had made use of his position as 

admiral, it was alleged,^ to prepare for insurrection by 
secretly forging cannon, laying up ammunition, and making friends 
with the Channel pirates. He was arrested and attainted by the 
same parliament that passed the Act of Uniformity. 

More serious trouble followed in the summer. The effort to 
introduce the Prayer Book was attended by risings in Cornwall and 

Devon. Exeter was besieged by a band of 10,000 rebels 

£°P"'i!';j^''' who demanded the restoration of the Six Articles, of 
ings, 1549. ' 

the mass, and the elevation of the Host, the suppression 
of the English Bible, and the recall of Cardinal Pole. They were 
put down by Russell and Grey but only after two hard-fought bat- 
tles, St. Mary's Clyst and Sampford Courtenay, in which four 
thousand of the western peasants were slain. Of the leaders, 
among whom was an Arundel, short shrift was made. Insurrection 

* Seymour was condemned witiiout trial. Hence the charges were 
never proved. 



566 THE PROGRESS OP THE REFORM [edward VI. 

had also broken out in Oxfordshire, Berkshire, and other places. 
The most serious rising occurred, ho^vever, in Norfolk which 
unlike the remote western counties had been a stronghold of the 
Eeformation. Here the grievance of the people was not the 
Prayer Book, but their poverty and suffering. A great camp was 
formed at Household Hill, near Norwich, whither under the guid- 
ance of a tanner named Ket the people proceeded in a very orderly 
way to summon the neighboring landlords before them to answer 
for their conduct in the enclosure of the neighboring commons and 
the eviction of yeoman tenants. The protector was greatly 
puzzled as to what course to follow, for these were his friends; he 
himself was attempting to check the greed of the landlords and 
had appointed a commission to inquire into the enclosures. He, 
therefore, sought to temporize and persuade the people to entrust 
their cause to him ; but the rebels refused to break up the camp until 
their grievances had first been righted. Fighting began, and then 
the trouble was on. John Dudley, the earl of AVarwick, who was 
marching north with an army designed for Scotland, was ordered 
to proceed against the rebels. This he did at once, routing them 
with great slaughter August 27. 

These events completely destroyed what was left of Somerset's 

waning influence. It was evident to the most hopeful that he had 

failed, not, however, from any lack of good will, but 

^^a^^ior^s'^^^ simply because he persisted in doing too many things at 

admiimtra- ouce. After two vears of administration he had to 

tion. 

show for his pains : the hostility of Scotland confirmed, 
war with France not only imminent but practically begun about 
the outposts of Boulogne, the anti-reform elements in the west 
goaded to open resistance, the tenantry of the midland and eastern 
counties in revolt, and a serious breach between landlord and ten- 
ants threatened, similar to the outbreaks of the fourteenth century. 
The public debt also had been increased by a million and a half 
pounds to which a ruinous rate of interest was daily adding its 
burden.^ The yearly income of the crown was about £300,000; 
but the household expenses under the extravagant and visionary 
management of the protector had increased from £19,000 to 

'For some of this, the protector had contracted as high as 13 or 14 %. 



1549] FIRST FALL OF SOMERSET 567 

£100,000.^ Cromwell had fleeced the church, but Somerset had 
flayed it; yet not for the state or the cause of reform but for him- 
self and his political friends. Corruption pervaded the public 
service from top to bottom. The royal mints not only continued 
their dangerous output of debased coins but the royal officers were 
allowed to do some coining on their own account. Sharington the 
master of the mint at Bristol, who was implicated in the fall of 
Thomas Seymour, confessed that in a few months he had thus put 
out some £100,000. The commander of the skeleton regiments on 
the northern border drew pay and rations for the full quota of 
troops, and kept up the fraud by hiring neighboring countrymen 
to fill his depleted ranks on muster days. 

The council, therefore, determined to take advantage of the 

unpopularity of the protector and oust him by simply falling back 

upon the terms of Henry's will. At first Somerset 

First fall of 

Somerset, thought of resistance, but an appeal to the country 

OctoT)er 1549. j j. j. .> 

revealed to him the sober truth that his only hope lay 

in the mercy of the council. This unnerved him ; he confessed 
his failure, and was allowed to retire in peace, though not without 
a few weeks of seclusion in the Tower. 

John Dudley, the earl of Warwick, who had been the chief 
instrument in the overthrow of Somerset, now became the influ- 
ential man of the council, but without the title or rank of protec- 
tor. He was such a man as times of revolution are likely to bring 
to the fore. He had by diligence and merit worked out from 
under the shadow of his father's reverses, and had become distin-. 
guished "as a soldier, a diplomatist, and as an admiral." He had 
commanded the English fleet in 1545 and won no small glory in 
bringing the attempted descents of the French of that year to 
naught. He had been second in command at Pinkie Cleugh. He 
was shrewd, cunning, and knew how to keep his thoughts to him- 
self. He was free from enthusiasm both in his faults and his vir- 
tues. He affected to support the religious reform but, as the 
sequel proved, his support was a matter of politics rather than 
principle. 

^ For part of this, Somerset was hardly responsible ; as a result of 
many causes, prices had risen enormously. 



568 THE PROGRESS OF THE REFORM [edwakd vi. 

The council first gave its attention to untangling the skein 
which had fallen to them from the impetuous fingers of Somerset. 
They made peace with France though at the sacrifice of 
counciiin Boulogne. Other measures were not so commendable. 
^ ' They proceeded to reduce the outstanding debt of the 

crown; but unfortunately the members of the council themselves 
had provided funds for the suppression of the recent revolts and 
their first care was to secure repayment by allowing each councillor 
to take a certain amount of bullion in fine silver to the royal mint 
and receive it back again "coined and printed into money current 
according to the established standard." More than £150,000 
"worth of base silver coin was thrown at once into circulation, 
deranging prices more than ever, shaking the exchange, driving 
the gold out of the country," and adding to the multitude of dis- 
tressing complications already existing. Among these is to be 
noticed a failure of the harvest which greatly increased the price 
of bread. The council took the matter up and attempted to fix ' 
the price at which grain might be sold. But the measure only 
exasperated the agricultural classes and did not relieve the dis- 
tress; the council quickly withdrew the dangerous regulation. 

At the time of the overthrow of Somerset the tide was already 

setting strong towards the conservative policy of Henry VIII. 

The commons of Devon and Cornwall had openly 

Dudley and demanded the restoration of the Catholic faith and a 

the reform. 

re-enactment of the Six Articles. But for Dudley to 
put himself at the head of this movement meant the restoration of 
Norfolk and Gardiner, and he very well knew that to restore Nor- 
folk meant the restoration of the old nobility to power and the 
speedy end of his own influence. His only hope, therefore, was 
to make thorough work where Somerset had begun. Bishops like 
Gardiner and Bonner were displaced by men like Eidley, Hooper, 
and Coverdale. The fires of Smithfield were not allowed to 
smoulder; and the world witnessed the unseemly spectacle of 
Protestants burning Protestants. In their efforts to enforce the 
Uniformity Act, however, the leaders had found an ominous and 
insurmountable obstacle in the courage of the Princess Mary, who 
by the will of Henry and the law of parliament was the heir to the 



1551, 1552] SECOND FALL OF SOMERSET 569 

throne. Through all the storm she had quietly but faithfully 
adhered to her mother's faith, and when ordered to give up the 
mass, she firmly persisted in the path of duty as she saw it. The 
council durst not go further ; to use violence would bring about 
the long dreaded alliance of the empire with France and possibly 
an invasion of England. To destroy Mary would give the 
emperor a claim upon the crown of England, since he was of 
Yorkist blood through Margaret the wife of Charles the Eash ; a 
claim which the pope might be expected to recognize as better at 
least than that of Edward or Elizabeth, both of whom had been 
born in schism. This constant threat of foreign interference is 
always to be borne in mind in considering the treatment of Mary 
at the hands of Somerset and Dudley. 

In carrying out his schemes Dudley needed all the available 
strength of the reform party, and in April 1550 Somerset was 

again admitted to the council. His influence had 
Dudley over- rapidly revived after his fall. Before the unquestioned 
^^V- -^^"3 sincerity of the man, the superiority of his personal 

character, his nearness to the king and interest in his 
welfare, men soon forgot his mistakes and began to look to him 
again as the real leader of the reform. But as the autumn of 
1551 came in, the reaction in his favor so alarmed Dudley that he 
began to plot again for his overthrow and suddenly arrested him on 
the charge of treason. And when he found that he could not con- 
vict him upon this charge, he dropped it for a charge of consj)iracy 
against Dudley himself, and in January 1553 the quondam pro- 
tector was sent to the block. ^ It was a fatal mistake for Dudley. 
From that day eyes were opened to the real character of this 
zealous reformer and men began to detest him. 

As Dndley realized that his popularity with his party was 
declining he increased his pretended enthusiasm for the purification 

of the church. The snccess of Charles in Germany 
Reforms of j^^d driven a multitude of Protestant exiles across the 

loo2. 

sea, who brought the ultra views of the Zwinglian 
school with them and soon made their influence felt at Oxford and 

^ Recent attempts have been made to vindicate the character and work 
of Somerset. See Pollard's, England under the Protector Somerset. 



570 THE PROGRESS OF THE REFORM [edward VI. 

Cambridge. Even Cranmer was drifting fast in their wake, and 
was prepared at last to deny the Eeal Presence in the mass. In 
1552 the Prayer Book of 1549, known as The First Prayer Booh 
of Edioard VI. was snperseded by the Second Prayer Book of 
Edward VI. which embodied many new phrases, showing the 
Zwinglian drift of the editors and making it no longer possible for 
the believers in transubstantiation to find shelter within its mel- 
lifluous cadences. The new Prayer Book was followed by the 
Forty-two Articles which presented a new statement of doctrine, 
based on the Lutheran confession. The same parliament also took 
time from their doctrinal discussions to pass a Poor Law 
Thefir^t ^ which Compelled each parish to make a systematic col- 
lection for its poor, an honest but futile effort to meet 
distresses which struck their roots far back into the fourteenth cen- 
tury. 

The Second Prayer Book of Edward VL and the Forty-two 

Articles indicate the high-water mark of the first period of the 

reform. The leaders had already outstripped the 

ivatermark nation. The corrnption of some, and the wholesale 

of VCToi^iT} • 

plundering of most, had discredited their principles; 
and the forces of reaction were gathering, all the more terrible and 
disastrons in recoil, because for the time repressed by authority and 
compelled to gather strength in secret. 



CHAPTER V 



THE CATHOLIC KEACTIOK 



EDWARD VI., 1553. 
MABY, 1553-155S. 



So far the reform had brought little of peace or contentment in 
its train. The authority of the church as a teacher of doctrine had 

been challenged ; its authority as a teacher of righteous- 
dmJmeshi^^ ness had been broken down. Men no longer sought the 

confessional, or feared the censure of teachers whom 
they had ceased to revere. Rascality ruled in high places; its 
example was felt through all the inferior walks of life. English 
goods in the past, like English money, had won a splendid reputa- 
tion in the marts of Europe, and were received everywhere without 
question or suspicion. But the general topsy-turvy of moral 
ideas, which had followed the loosening of religious bonds, soon 
bore fruit in a decline of national honesty. The government had 
led the way in putting out a dishonest coinage from the royal 
mints; English merchants and manufacturers were not a whit 
behind them in debasing the output of their looms. For a time 
the decline in the quality of English goods, as the decline in 
the quality of English money, was not understood by foreigners, 
and profits increased, but only temporarily ; nor was it long before 
the dishonest merchant began to reap the full reward of this 
suicidal policy. Bales of English goods were to be seen rotting on 
the quays of Antwerp or Venice, rejected by the consignees and 
stamped by the government inspector as fraudulent. To the dis- 
tress caused by the greed of the landlords was now to be added the 
distress caused by the greed of the merchants, whose trade was 
crippled by a decade of dishonesty more than by all the wars of 
Charles or Francis. The number of the unemployed continued to 
increase; even those who had work could no longer earn enough 

571 



572 THE CATHOLIC REACTION [ 



Edward VI. 



to keep themselves or their families. Those who suffered turned 
upon those who had abundance as in some way responsible for 
their misery. The proprietary class in turn were fully aware of 
the growing hatred and suspicion of the people ; they felt their 
insecurity and turned upon the party in power, seeing in their 
reckless waste and improvidence, their confiscations and wild 
financiering, their corruptions and tyrannies, the source of all the 
present evil. 

As Edward approached man's estate the more sanguine thought 
to find in him a remedy for existing evils. The minority rule 

would soon be ended and the king, of whom none had 
Diidieu^"^ ever heard aught but good, would put away his corrupt 

or incapable ministers and relieve his people of the bur- 
den of their ill -doing. But this hope was soon to be blighted. 
As Edward neared his sixteenth year, it became evident to his 
ministers that he would never endure the cares of royalty ; and 
Dudley, now duke of Northumberland, began to -turn his thought 
to the succession with the view of perpetuating his own authority. 
By the terms of Henry's will, sanctioned by an act of parliament, 
the Lady Mary was to succeed Edward in case he should die with- 
out heirs. Mary's preferences, moreover, were too well known to 
leave any doubt as to what kind of men would be chosen for her 
ministers; and with Howard and Gardiner in power Dudley's head 
would not rest upon his shoulders for a fortnight. Dudley, there- 
fore, determined upon a scheme which was as bold as it was desper- 
ate and impossible of success. He joersuaded Edward, ostensibly 
in the interest of the Reformation, to make a will as his father had 
done before him. By this will both Mary and Elizabeth were to 
be set aside as illegitimate and the succession was to pass to Lady 
Jane Grey, the granddaughter of Henry VIII. 's favorite sister 
Mary, the queen of Louis XII. of France, who had married for her 
second husband Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. Edward 
entered into the plan warmly. The will was signed, but there was 
not time to secure the sanction of parliament. For the same holy 
purpose, to save the Reformation, Edward was also persuaded to 
sanction the marriage of Lady Jane to Guilford Dudley, the son of 
Duke John, 



1553] QUEEN JANE 573 

On July 6, 1553 the boy king died, Dudley attempted to keep 
the secret until he could seize Mary, who was staying at the time at 

Hunsdou in Hertfordshire, and dispatched his son 
j^mi6^"»ro- Robert Dudley, better known afterward as Earl of 
juiTio' Leicester, to arrest her at once. But Mary's friends 

were equally alert, and within twenty-four hours after 
the king's death she was in full flight to join the Howards in Nor- 
folk, proclaiming her reign as she passed along and calling 
upon the loyal to Join her. In the meanwhile Northumberland 
summoned the couucil, announced the king's death, and proclaimed 
"Queen Jane." The unfortunate girl who was to be sacrificed to 
tlie minister's ambition, was hardly in her seventeenth year. Her 
beauty, her noble and pure spirit, her innocence and her tragic 
fate, have made her a universal favorite. One almost marvels that 
such a flower could bloom in the atmosphere that surrounded John 
Dudley. She cared nothing for the royal honors and submitted to 
his plans because she was taught it was her duty. Yet she was by 
no means a puppet, and stoutly refused to have Dudley's son, her 
husband, crowned with her. 

The issue was now fairly joined. To support Queen Jane, 
meant to support Dudley and the continuance of the policy which, 
" Queen ^^^^ brought such woe and unrest on the land ; to sup- 

"^'Ouem^' P^^'^ Mary meant an entire reversion of policy and, if 
Mary." nothing more, the restoration of the ecclesiastical laws 

of Henry VIII. The Lady Mary, moreover, "had the better 
right." Apart from the question of her mother's divorce, she 
had been named as the next in succession by an act of parliament 
and that law had never been repealed. But above all. Lady Jane 
stood for the Reformation and Mary stood for the old faith. The 
nation was weary of reformers who, after twenty years, appar- 
ently still saw as much to reform as ever. The people, moreover, 
no longer believed in the sincerity of Dudley, and they wanted a 
change in hope of bettering the temporal state of the kingdom. 
From the first then Jane had little prospect of success ; however 
men might respect her character, they regarded her as a crea- 
ture of Dudley's and felt no fervor in her cause; even in London, 
where if anywhere Dudley might expect support, his proclamation 



574 THE CATHOLIC REACTION [mabt 

had been received by the assembled crowds in silence. The lack 
of enthusiasm was ominous ; the tide of reaction was coming in, 
and had the law been on Dudley's side, it is not likely that the 
nation would have heeded it, when once Catharine's daughter had 
raised her standard. But now the law was on Mary's side; justice 
also was on her side, and the sympathies of the nation were with 
her. The old duke Thomas Howard was still in the Tower; but 
his sons and grandsons were up, and from far and near the country 
flocked to their banner. The fleet also declared for Mary, and at 
last even the Protestant lords went over to her. There was noth- 
ing left for Dudley but submission; and on July 19 he aban- 
doned his queen of a week, and himself proclaimed Mary at 
Cambridge. The next day he was arrested and sent to the Tower. 
There was no hope for him, and yet with the idea of winning some 
favor with his executioners he made an abject confession: that his 
Protestantism had been only a sham, that he was a good Catholic 
at heart and that he had been all along playing a part. The last 
was probably the most truthful statement lie had ever made during 
his entire false life. He failed to save himself, but did great 
harm to the Protestant cause; for the simple folk, who had called 
him their "Joshua," and were accustomed to trust him implicitly, 
naturally began to suspect all professions and believe in no man's 
sincerity. He., moreover, gave the party who were coming into 
power, a very low estimate of the sincerity of the whole body of 
reformers, and by leading Mary and her advisers to think that 
they were all like him, doubtlessly encouraged the policy of perse- 
cution. On August 3 Mary entered London. The Lady Jane 
and her husband were arrested, and in Noveniber were tried and 
convicted of treason. But Mary full}^ intended to be lenient, and 
had no thought then of shedding their blood. 

The choice of Mary was the ex]iression of the desire of the 
nation to retrace its steps. But how far would the reaction go? 

This would be determined by the character of Mary 
^S^^y and the policy of her ministers. How long should the 

reaction endure? This would be determined by the 
extent to which the people would follow their sovereign. The 
outlook for the reformers, therefore, was not encouraging. The 



1553] EARLY MODERATIOK OF MARY 575 

new queen was a Tudor, with all the Tudor tenacity of purpose 
and blind self-will, with a dangerous possibility of ruthless cruelty 
if roused or resisted. With all the intensity of her Tudor nature, 
moreover, Mary was devoted to her mother's- faith and under 
strong influence was certain to take up the full restoration of that 
faith to her people as the one object of her life. 

At first, however, her course was moderate enough. She had 
no intention of being severe. The emperor sent her his con- 
gratulations and admonished her to move cautiously, 
^r^i!!^^'3Zt to be content with the free exercise for herself of her 
creed, to take no step without the sanction of parlia- 
ment and by no means of her own authority to attempt to set 
aside the Act of Uniformity; her first duty was to bring quiet to 
her realm ; her prudence and moderation must give satisfaction to 
her subjects of all opinions. Gardiner, the old bishop of Win- 
chester, had been released on the day of the entry into London 
and placed at the head of the council as chancellor. The policy 
which he outlined for the administration conformed in all respects 
to the sensible advice of the emperor. The expenses of the house- 
hold were to be cut down to the scale which had prevailed in 
Henry VII. 's time. The garrisons of Berwick and Calais were to 
be placed on a more economical footing ; the navy reduced ; the 
irregular guard diminished. There was to be no more bribery in 
the courts of Westminster and among the justices of the peace; 
^'they were to be restored to their authority without suffering any 
matters to be ordered otherwise than as the laws should appoint." 
Mary's first acts were in keeping with this program. The late 
king was buried with the public rites prescribed by the existing 
law; Cranmer, who was still at large, was allowed to 

Early moder- • m 

ationof conduct the ceremonies. The members of Edward's 

Mary. 

councn who had not supported Dudley, were left in 
undisturbed possession of their places. The Protestant bishops 
who had been most pronounced in their later teaching were 
removed and the old Catholic bishops were restored again to their 
dioceses. The return of Bonner from the Marshalsea to St. Paul's 
was like a triumphal procession; "the people rang the bells for 
joy." The persecution of Catholics was also stopped; religious 



576 THE CATHOLiC RExkCTIOK [mary 

disputations were forbidden, but Protestants were to be protected 
from the interference of reactionary mobs. 

To the great majority of the people this was well pleasing. 
They hailed Mary's accession as the first step toward a return to 
the policy of her father, and they did not wish to go 
ff^MafirT f^^i'tlier. They were not Protestants; but they did not 
meni"^'''^"' ^^^^ ^^ ^®® Mary declared legitimate to the disparage- 
ment of Elizabeth's claims as fixed by Henry's will. 
They had, moreover, dipped too generally into the plunder of the 
church to wish to see the church restored as it had been in Wol- 
sey's time; they had no desire to surrender the confiscated lands, 
which had now been in their hands for nearly a generation. When 
therefore Mary's first parliament, the most nearly representative 
of any which had been chosen in England for many years, came 
together, the most radical of Edward's religious laws, the Prayer 
Book, and the Act of Uniformity, were swept away; the Mass was 
restored by a vote of 350 to 80 in the Commons, and the clergy 
were required to return to celibacy; but beyond this parliament 
refused to go. It was satisfied with restoring the statutes of 
Henry's reign; and even here it made exceptions. The Six 
Articles and the older laws against the Lollards found no favor. 

Gardiner, the chancellor, was a thorough-going Englishman 
and had no desire to see either the papal authority restored in 
England, or the crown bound by a foreign alliance to 
meniaitdihe ^^^® Support of Spain or France. But Mary was already 
mwstiou^i553 tlrifting out from uiider his influence and had fallen 
under tlie power of other counsellors. By them she 
had been induced to fix her mind upon two projects which she had 
long cherished in secret; first to secure a marriage alliance with 
her cousin Philij^ of Spain, and second to restore England com- 
pletely to the papal allegiance. In the second she had been greatly 
encouraged by Renard, the imperial minister, yet he had no desire 
by pushing it, to imperil the prospect of the marriage alliance. 
In this he reflected both the ambition and the caution of his mas- 
ter, Charles, in fact, regarded the marriage alliance as a necessary 
offset to the alliance of Mary Queen of Scots with Francis of 
France. It w?.s to be his next move in the great continental 



1553] 5^HE SPANISH ilAERIAGE 577 

game ; the interests of England were of little moment compared 
with the success of his vast schemes against his rival. But Mary 
with characteristic Tudor impatience was unwilling to wait for the 
unwinding of the emperor's plot, and had no sooner made up her 
mind than she entered at once into secret negotiations with the 
pope, and Cardinal Pole set out for England. The emperor heard 
of the measure in alarm and persuaded the pope to call Pole back. 
In the meanwhile the parliament in its own way was working 
at the problems presented by the new reign. When it had settled 
the religious question, it turned to the question of the royal mar- 
riage. The members were fully determined that a foreign prince 
should not sit upon the English throne even as the consort of 
their queen, and on the 16th of November the Speaker of the 
Commons, in the name of parliament, formally petitioned the 
queen to marry one of her own subjects. Mary was furious, and 
as the parliament showed no signs of withdrawing its impertinent 
advice, on December 6 she sent the members to their homes, — a 
bad omen for the future.' 

In the council the Spanish marriage was hardly more popular. 
Gardiner who was in touch with the parliament, proposed Edward 

Courtenay, who as great-grandson of Edward IV. was 
andtiie^^^^^ of the blood-royal and though a subject, worthy by 
£-^?.!'i^!L birth to be the queen's consort. But Mary's mind was 

made up, — ahvays a serious matter for a Tudor. She, 
moreover, had formed a most romantic attachment for her Spanish 
kinsman, whom she had never seen, but whom she imagined to be 
a paragon of all princely virtues. Gardiner knew his mistress too 
well to continue his opposition, and wisely determined to prevent 
so far as possible the evils which might follow the Spanish mar- 
riage, by prescribing a series of stipulations, in which Charles 
pledged himself that Philip should never be more than titular king 
of England, that England should never be united with Spain under 
one crown, that all foreigners should be excluded from command 
in the English army or navy, and that England should not be 
asked to assist Spain in her wars with France. The council then 
yielded a reluctant consent. The marriage contracts were 
signed, and the time for the wedding fixed. 



578 THE CATHOLIC KEACTIOK [maky 

From the nation at largo Mary got little comfort. In spite of 

the concessions of Charles, Englishmen generally believed that 

England was now to become a mere dependency of 

General Snain, like Naples and tlie Low Countries, ruled by 

opposition to i- ^ ^ . 

theSpnnitih Spanish adventurers and overawed by Spanish mus- 

marria<je. ■>- ^ x 

keteers. If Protestants and Catholics could agree to 
make common cause something might be done, but the bitter 
memories connected with the names of Seymour and Dudley were 
too fresh to permit the Catholics to join with their recent foes. 
The Protestant leaders, or rather the wreck of the old party of 
John Dndley, rallied abont Henry Grey the duke of Suffolk, 
Lady Jane's father. Sir Thomas Wyatt, and Sir Peter Carew, 
and laid the foundation of an extensive conspiracy with the 
avowed purpose of preventing the Spanish marriage but really to 
depose Mary and place Elizabeth and Courtenay on the throne. 
Time, however, was urgent, and the vigilance of Gardiner forced 
the leaders to act before their plans were ripe. Suffolk strove to 
rouse the midlands, but his connection with the late duke of 
Northumberland prevented the people from rallying to his stan- 
dard and he soon found himself a prisoner in the Tower. Sir 
Peter Carew attempted to raise Devonshire but with no better suc- 
cess, except that he managed to get away to France. Wyatt in 
the southeast got together some 15,000 Kentishmen and led them 
to South wark. Mary had no armed force at hand to defend her; 
the Londoners were in panic and more than half inclined to allow 
the insurgents to cross the bridge, but the vigorous and courage- 
ous conduct of Mary, ably supported by the old duke of Norfolk, 
brought them to their duty; the bridge was held and Wyatt was 
compelled to ascend to Kingston where he found a crossing and 
from whence he managed to fight his way into the city. The 
quest from first to last was a fool's errand; the little band wbo 
had followed Wyatt were overwhelmed and he himself with Sufl'olk 
and others were sent to the block. It was inevitable that 

Sufi^olk's daughter the Lady Jane and her harmless 
^^^^' husband, should be drawn down with her father and 

his friends, although they had taken no part hi the plot. On Feb- 
ruary 12, the sentence of the year before was carried out. On the 



1554] THE PAPAL ALLEGIANCE RENEWED 579 

same day Courtenay was arrested and a wholesale slaughter of com- 
mon prisoners begun. Gibbets were erected over all London, and 
everywhere the eyes of the people rested on "the hideous spectacle 
of hanging men." Elizabeth was sent to the Tower; Gardiner 
and Eenard pressed Mary to give consent to her execution and 
for a few days the ax hung above Elizabeth's head, suspended only 
by a thread. Her enemies, however, could bring no proof to show 
that she had been a party to the conspiracy ; the lords, moreover, 
led by her kinsman, William Howard who commanded the fleet, 
were determined that guilty or not, she should not be sacrificed, 
and in May she was finally released. Courtenay also was dismissed 
and allowed to retire to the continent. He died at Padua 1556. 
The ill timed insurrection and the vigorous treatment of the 
rebels prevented further opposition and in April a new parlia- 
ment formally sanctioned the marriage contract. The 
Mm^x^mid^ prince arrived in July and on the 25th the marriage 
Philip, July -^yas celebrated. The pair were thoroughly incompat- 
ible; Mary was plain, withoiit any attractive qualities 
of mind or body, and withal was twelve years the senior of her 
husband. Her health was already breaking ; she had grown wan 
and haggard; her spirits were easily affected; all of which did not 
tend to commend her to a husband who had tolerated the mar- 
riage at all, simply as a political necessity. He met Mary's 
ardent devotion with a cold indifEerence, which soon changed to 
disgust when he found that the suspicions of parliament and 
council showed no signs of abating and that he was expected to 
play the part simply of gentleman usher to his queen. The next 
summer he hailed the pretext furnished by the proposed abdica- 
tion of his father to get himself home as speedily as possible. 

While Philip remained in England he had counselled his ardent 
queen to move cautiously in carrying out the second project which 
was as dear to her as the Spanish marriage. Now, how- 
The papal ever, the only influence that could have stayed her hand 
newed, 1554, was withdrawn. The parliament, which had accepted 
the Spanish marriage, had flatly refused to restore the 
Six Articles, and a proposition to reenact the laws against Lol- 
lardy had been lost somewhere between the two houses. But in 



580 THE CATHOLIC REACTIOIn" [MAsy 

October when Mary's third parliament came together, it was soon 
evident that while a large majority had no objection to restoring 
the pope, they were in no mind to renounce the possession of 
church lands which had fallen to the nation by reason of its share 
in Henry's acts of spoliation. Mary exerted all her influence to 
bring over the reluctant members to agree to right the wrong 
done. The repentance of the apostate nation v/ould have little 
meaning unless it surrendered the fruits of its sin; nor would the 
restoration of the papacy be of much practical value if the church 
were to remain in beggary. In vain Mary and her chancellor 
pleaded; in vain Mary sought to set an example by releasing the 
church lands which were held by the crown. There the matter 
hung until the pope came to the rescue by formally agreeing to 
ratify the possession of the church lands by the present holders, 
on condition that parliament pass the laws necessary to restore the 
papal supremacy. On the 29th of November parliament voted on 
the question, whether the country should return to the obedience 
of the Apostolic see. In the Upper House the assent was given 
without opposition. In the Lower House, out of 360 members 
present, only two responded with . a negative vote. The next 
day, St. Andrew's Day, the last of November 1554, the queen, the 
council, and the members of both houses of parliament, repaired to 
Whitehall and kneeling before Cardinal Pole, the papal legate, 
who with "ecstatic impatience" had been waiting for this moment 
ever since the accession of Mary, confessed the sin of the nation 
and received absolution. England was now once more restored to 
the church of the continent. 

It remained for parliament to undo the liostile legislation of 
Henry VIII. It was, however, not to be so simple a matter as 

the vote of November 29 seemed to indicate, "The 
The ''Great papal supremacy, the secularization of the church 
any4, 1555. property, and the authority of the Ej)iscopal courts," 

were so inextricably interwoven, the acts or parts of 
acts bearing on the question were so many, it was not until Jan- 
uary 4, that the result of the work, known as the "Great Bill," * 
was formally presented to the crown. By this act all the ecclesias- 

1 Gree andHardy, pp. 385-415. 



1555] THE REACTION AT FLOOD 581 

tical legislation of Henry snbseqnent to the year 1529 was swept 
away. 

The limits of legislative reaction were now reached and parlia- 
ment refused to go farther. The two acts upon which Elizabeth's 

right to the succession rested had been slated by Gar- 
^t'rtood^**''"' *l^i^6i" foi' condemnation, but parliament refused to 

touch them save as they affected the See of Rome. 
It restored the authority of the bishops' courts but expressly 
denied them the right "to inquiet or molest any person or per- 
sons or body politic," on account of the possession of any of the 
sequestered lands or. other property of the church. The Act of 
Mortmain was suspended for twenty years, but "the spectre of 
praemunire" was left "unexercised" to haunt the clergy with all 
the shadowy terrors which had been imparted to it by the decision 
of Henry VIII. 's courts. In vain the clergy pleaded that the 
hated law might be repealed or at least limited in its application ; 
parliament would go no farther. The tide of reaction was at 
flood. 

The nation was satisfied; enough had been done, and here mat- 
ters might have rested had not Mary made up her mind to force 

Englishmen to become Catholics in heart as they had 
thepersecu- become Catholics again by the laws of the land. As 

men understood the functions of government, it was 
entirely within her right to compel her subjects to subscribe to a 
uniform faith. She was also justified by the customary law of 
Europe in using violence against those who defied the laws and 
subjecting them to death by the torture of fire. Henry VIII. 
had done this and Cranmer had sanctioned it in the case of Ana- 
baptists. Even Latimer had preached a commendatory sermon 
when the Catholic Father Forest had been slowly tortured to death 
in an open iron cradle which was kept swinging over a slow fire. 
It was no more than Catholic and Protestant states were doing to 
their rebellious subjects on the continent. It was nevertheless a 
grave and fatal error, and did more to defeat Mary's purpose and 
bring on a new Protestant reaction than all the fiery polemics of 
men like John Knox and others, foreigners mostly, who had fled to 
the continent again on scent of the coming storm. Mary had 



582 THE CATHOLIC REACTIOlSr [mart 

triumphed over the laws ; she had silenced opposing theorists ; she 
could not crush the rising spirit of humanity in the hearts of her 
people. 

For this reaction Mary herself was largely to blame. Gardiner 

had favored severe measures with the heretics as with the political 

rebels, but he drew back when he saw its futility. 

HcsiooiitS'i'bilj' 

ity for the Pole succeeded Cranmer and his position was always 

persecuti07is. j> , • n 

one 01 great mnuence ; yet he was by no means m sym- 
pathy with the persecutions. lie "publicly told the clergy that the 
best way of reclaiming the people was not by measures of severity, 
but by reforming their own lives," and on one occasion at least 
he dismissed twenty heretics with a mere submission. The Span- 
ish influence, it is well known, was against the persecutions, not 
for reasons of humanity, but because Philip and his advisers were 
wise enough to foresee the ultimate effect upon the Spanish influ- 
ence in England. But Mary's Tudor blood had been roused by 
opposition, and Avitli a persistence which at times looks almost like 
insanity, she pursued her way. Wilfulness assumes queer guises 
sometimes. In the case of the father, it appeared as vanity, self- 
love, lust; in the case of the daughter, as duty, the desire to do 
the will of God as a bigoted mind understood it. 

On June 30, 1555 the act which restored the heresy acts of 
Henry IV. and Henry V. went into effect and soon the fires of 
Smithfield were again crackling merrily. Among the first vic- 
tims were John Rogers, the Bible translator, and Hooper the 
bishop of Gloucester. Gardiner and others, possibly Mary her- 
self, did not expect any serious resistance; a few examples only 
would be necessary to show the heretics that the government was 
in earnest. They gave the leaders little credit for sincerity and 
thought that, like Dudley, the smell of death would frighten 
them into speedy acquiescence. But these were different men 
whose faith was now to be jjut to the test; nor could their firm- 
ness be shaken by the sight of the flames. Spectators who came 
to scoff and Jeer, went away thoughtful and reverent. Coverdale 
was saved by the interposition of the king of Denmark; but 
Ridley and Latimer sealed their faith at Oxford, October 16, 
1555. Latimer was now in his seventy-seventh year, hale and 



1556] DEATH OF CKANMER 583 

hearty and merry to the last. "Play the man, Master Eiclley," 
he shouted to his fellow, as the executioners were fastening them 
to the stake, "we shall this day light such a candle in England, 
as I trust by God's grace shall never be put put." 

Of all Mary's victims none perhaps had merited her vengeance 
more than Cranmer. She would not be a woman to forget the 
part which he had taken in fastening the stain upon 
Cranmer, her birth. Cranmer had been brought up for trial in 
September 1555 at the time when Ridley and Latimer 
were tried. But he, unlike them, was a regularly consecrated 
bishop of the Catholic church and his fellow bishops feared to 
proceed without special license from Eome. When at last in the 
following February the requisite authority was received, Cran- 
mer's courage which had never been of the stoutest failed him. 
He shrank from the torture of the heretic's death, and in hope of 
gaining his life recanted. His enemies, however, had no thought 
of allowing their victim to escape and he was condemned not- 
withstanding. As the end drew near, he recovered his spirit and 
boldly facing death withdrew his unhappy denial of the Protes- 
tant faith, thrusting his right hand into the flame first, "that 
unworthy right hand," as he sadly exclaimed, with which he 
had signed the recantation. 

The whole number of executions amounted to 277. The 
victims were taken almost altogether from the ranks of the com- 
mon people. No one of note among the laity suflered; 
fxtmt^of^^^'^ and with the exception of a few ecclesiastics, such as 
thepersecu- Ridley, Latimer, and Cranmer, none who could be 
called prominent. The executions, moreover, were 
confined almost entirely to the three dioceses of London, Norwich, 
and Canterbury. In the rest of England all told, they did not 
number more than fifty. They were enough, however, to stir a 
deep spirit of hate and resentment among the people and leave 
an indelible impression upon the English mind which three 
hundred years have not been able to efface. 

Mary felt deeply the decline of her popularity. She knew 
that her people hated her and waited for her death. To add to 
her sorrow and sense of loneliness, _^Philip, under the plea of new 



584 THE CATHOLIC KEACTION [maby 

duties, had practically deserted lier. She longed for the lore of 

the husband who never came, and v/ho ceased at last even to 

write to her. She had prayed for a child: but her 

DccHtic of J. -J ? 

Mary's prayers had been mocked. Even God apparently had 

abandoned her. She was alone and desolate. She 
dared no longer trust herself in public, lest she should give way 
in unseemly outbursts of hysteric passion. She fell into a 
profound melancholy and great distaste of life. 

Her councillors knew that the nation, goaded by the brutal 
scenes which they were called upon to witness, only waited a 
leader to break into open revolt. Even Bonner hesitated, con- 
scious of the execrations of the people, but Mary egged him on 
to do his duty. To her clouded mind all her disaiipointments 
were due to her remissness in expelling the spirit of an ti- Christ 
from the realm. The few Spaniards who remained, also came in 
for a share of the popular execrations and in their fear pathetically 
appealed to their master for their recall. Still tlie leaders hesi- 
tated to summon the people to arms. An armed insurrection 
would give Philip an excuse for landing his Spanish infantry at 
once and taking possession of the English strongholds. Once in 
possession it would be impossible to eject him without the aid of 
France. From this they shrank. It was, moreover, no longer a 
secret that the unha^^py queen was dying of an incurable malady, 
that her time was limited, and that Elizabeth would soon mount 
the throne in her place. 

One attempt was made by Thomas Stafford, the grandson of 
the late duke of Buckingham. In April 1557 he succeeded in 
landing thirty Englishmen and one Frenchman in 
stafforcr^_ Yorkshire, and actually seized Scarborough Castle, but 
1657. ' only to be immediately taken and put to death. The 

attempt of itself was of little importance; but the 
expedition had been fitted out in France and gave Mary therefore 
a pretext for declaring war against France. Philip, who visited 
England for a few weeks in March, had exerted all his influence 
for this purpose, and Mary was well pleased to have one oppor- 
tunity at last of gratifying her husband. 

England, perhaps in all her history, was never less prepared 



1558] THE LOSS OF CALAIS 585 

for war. Stephen Gardiner had died at his post ^November 12, 
1555. He had done much to restore the credit of the govern- 
ment and reduce its indebtedness. But after him the 
Caiais^Jan- conduct of the administration had fallen into incom- 
petent hands. Mary had been allowed to exhaust the 
royal treasury in her frantic efforts to refound the abbeys and 
restore the desecrated church buildings. Many complaints had 
come from Calais of the beggared condition of its garrison and 
the ruined state of its fortifications; she had been warned by 
Admiral Howard of the pitiful condition of the navy. But vfith 
the same blindness with which she had urged on the executions 
of linen drapers and village priests, she had continued to pour 
out the national treasure in her work of restoring the church. 
She was now compelled, therefore, to levy forced loans, to lay 
new duties upon imports and exports, for which the laws gave 
her no sanction, and to continue the debasement of the coinage. 
After so much else, these acts completely destroyed what little 
credit Mary still retained with the ]3roprietary classes, who had 
not .been directly affected by the persecutions. The war itself, 
moreover, was exceedingly unpopular; the possibility of it was 
the thing which had been feared from the first, and was the secret 
of most of the popular suspicion of Philip. When, therefore, 
early in the new year, the news Avas brought home that Calais and 
Guisnes, the last foothold of the English in France, which had 
been English territory for 211 years, had been taken by the duke 
of Guise without an effort on the part of the incompetent minis- 
ters of Mary to save them, nothing was left to complete the 
general disgust and detestation of the people. 

No one felt the crushing disappointment of the fall of Calais 
more than Mary herself. It was to the dying woman the last sign 
of the Divine disfavor and she roused herself with 
Death of frantic energy to continue her work. The fiery execu- 
PoU'^Sovem- 'tions went on with renewed vigor; the rebuilding and 
beri7,i558. reestablishing of monasteries continued. But the end 
was not far off. It came on the 17th of November 
1558. A few hours later her old friend Cardinal Pole also passed 
away, broken-hearted it would seem under the treatment of the 



586 THE CATHOLIC REACTION [mart 

new pope Paul IV. who, inspired by his French sympathies, had 
made Pole the victim of his hatred of Philip, first depriving him 
of his legatine powers, and then, to justify the act, charging him 
with heresy. 

Mary was a good woman spoiled by the fatal superstition which 
confounded religion with orthodox opinion. Had she lived in 

better times she might have proved a worthy queen, 
of^Mm^f' Religions party hatred has made of her a monster, but 

she seems to have been well educated, amiable in man- 
ner, and not altogether unpleasing, until she became haggard by 
disease and a breaking heart. ^ No monarch was ever more con- 
scientious in the fulfillment of a monarch's high responsibilities; 
none more sincere in the unflinching pursuit of wliat she deemed 
to be right. It was impossible for the daughter of Catharine of 
Aragon to be other than a bitter enemy of the Peformation. But 
she was not cruel by nature ; few political executions would have 
attended her accession to the throne, had not the foolish rebellion 
of Suffolk and Wyatt driven her to measures of severity. Her 
religious persecutions also were inspired not by a thirst for blood, 
but by her passionate desire to save the souls of the millions of her 
countrymen, who, as she sincerely believed, were in danger of 
eternal damnation because of the errancy of a few religious 
teachers. In this use of political power she was ujiheld by the 
convictions of the most etdightened men of her time. 

^ Gold win Smith, The United Kingdom, I. pp., 358, 359. 



CHAPTEE VI 

ELIZABETH; THE REFORM ESTABLISHED 

ELIZABETH 155S-15Si 

THE STUART SUCCESSION 

Margaret Tudor, eldest daughter of Henry VII. 
! 
m. (1) James IV. of Scotland j m. (2) Archibald Douglas, Earl of Angus 

James V. = Mary of Guise Margaret = Matthew Stuart, Earl 

of Scotland I I of Lennox, d. 1.571 



II- I 

Maby, = Henry Stuart, Lord Charles Stuart. Earl of 

executed 1587 I Darnley I Lennox 

James VI. of Scotland, 1567-162.5 Arabella Stuart, died 

and i. of England, 16U3-1625 1615 

Although Elizabeth was barely twenty-five^ when she came to 
the throne, her life had been so fraught with dangers and crowded 

with experiences that she was already old in wisdom. 
EUzabeth^^ It is said, that she was very beautiful and possessed all 

the accomplishments of the great lady of her day; she 
could speak Latin, Italian, or French, and could read Greek ; she 
was well versed in theology, history, and other branches of the 
learning of the time. She had her father's masculine will, his 
shrewd knack of judging men and things, and his coarse but 
direct way of expressing himself. She had her mother's coquetry 
and freedom of manner, her vanity and love of admiratiou; she 
had her father's fondness for dress and display. But unlike either, 
her passions were never given the leash. She could be as par- 
simonious as Henry YII. ; she could be as patient and self-con- 
trolled in working toward an end. Of personal religion, she knew 
nothing ; conscience with her was a matter of policy rather than of 
feeling. She could lie most impudently ; she could be as rough 
and boisterous and profane as one of her Dover sailors. She could 
be as voluble as a fishwife in the torrent of abuse which she 
might pour upon the luckless minister who happened to rouse her 

587 



588 THE EErOEM ESTABLISHED . [Elizabeth 

wrath, spitting in his face or making his head ring with a sound- 
ing box on the ears. 

In state-craft she was a master, and with marvelous insight 
grasped the conditions which confronted her. And yet possibly 
her tastes served her liere fully as much as her native 
Elizabeth shrevvdness. She hated extravagance in the use of pub- 
lic funds; hence her conduct of the treasury was sparing 
even to parsimoniousness, but in parsimony was salvation. She 
hated extravagance in religion as well and had no sympathy with 
the ultra Protestants; hence she was conservative in her religious 
policy, and probably would have remained a Catholic if the church 
had not disowned her. As it was, she drifted with the people, 
restraining the excesses of either party, but yielding when she 
must to the will of the nation. She hated the French and was 
suspicious of the Spaniards; hence she would ally herself with 
neither, but coquetted with both, deceived both, and accomplished 
her end at last, keeping England out of "foreign entanglements" 
and giving the country peace for twenty years. In a word she 
proposed to do nothing, to allow her foreign enemies to wear 
themselves out in the suicidal struggle which was distracting 
Europe, while England recovered its wasted energies. This emi- 
nently shrewd and characteristic policy, with rare skill and patience, 
she followed steadily during a reign of forty-five years. 

When Elizabeth began her reign, the realm was in a critical 

condition. The bitter memories of the past were fresh and the 

agents of Mary's cruelties still held the high places in 

Difficulties church and state. The country was in the midst of a 

wHicli faced ,. , • , i th i n j i t mi i • 

Elizabeth. disastrous war With Jb rance and Scotland. Ihe king- 
dom was practically defenseless; it was without an 
army, without a navy, and its fortifications were crumbling. The 
treasury was empty ; the currency was in confusion ; trade was lan- 
guishing, and taxes were heavy. During the last three years of 
Mary's reign, moreover, the land had been ravaged by famine and 
pestilence, and the people were still suffering. They were just in 
the mood, therefore, to cast themselves with terrible energy into a 
reaction which . threatened to be even more violent, more terri- 
ble, more destructive of life and property than the Marian per- 



1558] WILLIAM CECIL 589 

sedition, if it did not end in civil war. The question of the succes- 
sion, also, was by no means settled ; the spent storm of the fifteenth 
century still hovered darkly above the horizon and the queen's 
right to the throne was certain to he challenged by the Catholic 
powers. France was sure to press the claims of Mary of Scot- 
land, and the pope, strongly French in liis sympathies, was cer- 
tain to issue a bull of excommunication whenever the French 
court gave the word. Such was the forbidding outlook when 
Elizabeth took up the work of her unhappy sister. 

Almost the first important act of Elizabeth was to make 
William Cecil Secretary of State. He was born in 1520 in Lin- 
colnshire and educated at Cambridge. He had entered 
^iHtoni i]2^o the service of Henry VIII. and after his death had 
become Somerset's private secretary. Under Dudley's 
administration he had held high office and, although he had 
declared for Queen Jane, his life had been spared. During Mary's 
reign he had remained in obscurity, finding shelter with many 
others who had been of Edward's court, by conforming to the 
dominant religion. Another important appointment of Elizabeth 
was that of Matthew Parker, the old chaplain of her mother, to 
the position left vacant by Pole's death. Both men w^ere moder- 
ate Protestants and were one with Elizabeth in her desire to 
restore the tranquillity of the realm. To Nicholas Bacon, the 
brother-in-law of Cecil, was committed the keeping of the Great 
Seal. 

The religious question demanded immediate settlement. The 
nation was still Catholic, both in form and in sentiment, although 
the people were weary of the church courts and their 
and'thf^ heresy trials, and were generally disgusted with the 
mestimi tyranny of priests. The new pope, Paul TV., more- 

over, was apparently inclined to demand the surrender 
of the church lands, and in that event the papacy also would 
inevitably come in for a share in the revulsion of feeling roused by 
the excesses of Mary and her pro-Spanish policy. Yet Elizabeth 
hesitated to break with the papacy. She was more Catholic than 
Protestant in her sympathies and had no desire to commit 
England again to the Reformation. But Anne Boleyn's daughter 



590 THE KEFOEM ESTABLISHED [Elizabeth 

could never expect tlie recognition of Rome. If England were 
to remain Catholic, Mary of Scotland and not Elizabeth must be 
accepted as the legitimate sovereign, and Paul IV., a man any- 
thing but conciliatory, refused outright to recognize the right of 
the new queen to the succession. If Elizabeth would reign there- 
fore, she must take up again the work of her father. But here 
she was confronted by the danger of excessive reaction. The 
Protestant exiles were already trooping back from Germany and 
the Low Countries, and, vociferous for change, were inciting the 
London mob to attack the mass and all popish observances. Yet 
Elizabeth would not be hurried. She insisted on having mass in 
Latin, but she permitted the Epistles and Gospels, the Ten Com- 
mandments, the Lord's Prayer and the Creed, to be used in English. 
She stopped the persecutions for heresy, but forbade controversy. 
She refused to disturb Mary's bishops and assured Philip that she 
believed in transubstantiation. 

When parliament came together early in 1559 the cautious mod- 
eration of Elizabeth was fully justified. The most of Mary's 
ecclesiastical legislation was repealed, but of eighteen 
irriisiafion ecclesiastical acts of Henry VIII. which had been 

.// KUznhffhS , ^ , ^r . . • -, -, ^ • 

jirstfjarUa- repealed by Mary, only ten were revived, and oi nine or 
Edward VI., only one.^ A new Act of Supremacy 
declared the queen to be "over all persons and causes, as well 
ecclesiastical as civil, within these dominions supreme;" but the 
style "Snpreme Head of the Church" was dropped. A new Act of 
Uniformity also appeared; but the Prayer Book was so ordered as 
to hold to a middle course, leaving, in language studiously 
ambiguous, room for the disciples of all faiths, so that Catholic 
or Anglican, Lutheran or Calvinist, might find his creed in the 
common form. "Such ornaments of the church and ministers 
were to be retained and used, as were in the Church of England by 
the authority of Parliament in the second year of King Edward 
VI." These measures were not expected to satisfy the radicals 
of any party; but they might quiet the apprehension of the mod- 
erate men of all parties and furnish the basis upon which English- 

' See Gee and Hardy, pp. 442-458. Cf. with Mary's Acts of Repeal, 
lb., pp. 377-416. 



1583] THE COURT OF HIGH COMMISSION 591 

men might live at peace with each other. No declaration of faith 
was to be exacted from laymen. If a man attended chnrch, the 
requirements of conformity were satisfied. If he absented himself 
from church, a fine of 12 pence for the household was prescribed. 
Officeholders, whether lay or ecclesiastical, were required to take 
the oath of supremacy ; to fail was to lose their position and be 
debarred forever after from entering the public service. The 
ecclesiastical officer who took the oath and afterwards refused to 
comply with the terms of the Act of Uniformity, was to be pun- 
ished with heavy fines and temporary imprisonment for the first 
and second offenses; for the third, deposition and life imprison- 
ment. These requirements for the times were certainly moderate 
enough; but the last provision showed that moderation was not 
to be taken as weakness. Elizabeth did not mean to be trifled 
with. 

The church as organized by Mary was not so easy to manage. 

Convocation formally approved of transubstantiation and the 

papal supremacy. The bishops in the House of Lords 

The reaction all spoke and voted against the Act of Supremacy, and 

and the r j-' 

church when Elizabeth demanded that they should take the 

oath only one of the fourteen bishops yielded. Of the 
lower clergy, however, out of 9,000 only 189 refused the oath and 
threw up their posts. Of the others many, while avoiding the 
oath under various pretexts, yet indicated their submission to the 
new order. Elizabeth, who had no thought of driving them to 
extremes, was apparently satisfied. With the power of making- 
episcopal appointments in her hands, she could wait for a more 
gradual but surer way of securing a loyal body of ecclesiastics. 

The Act of Supremacy had also empowered the queen to dele- 
gate authority to commissioners who should inquire into, and 
punish, all violations of the ecclesiastical laws of the 
The Court of kingdom. At first Elizabeth contented herself with 

High Com- . . . . . -, , ,, 

mission, loss, issuing only occasional commissions, but there was so 
much work to be done and the docket soon fell so far 
in arrears that in 1583 a permanent court, the famous Court of 
High Commission, was established, consisting of forty persons, 
twelve of whom were bishops. 



592 THE REFORM ESTABLISHED [ELizABKTii 

Elizabeth found on her accession that Philip II. of Spain 
seriously desired to be her friend ; for since Mary Queen of Scots 

was married to the Dauphin, Philip was forced to support 
and^PMiip Elizabeth against Mary. This necessity was England's 

salvation ; for England in 1558 could have coped with 
neither kingdom successfully. In his anxiety to retain Elizabeth 
as his ally, Philip proposed marriage. Elizabeth, however, had 
no inclination to marry the cold and politic Spaniard of whom she 
had seen quite enough in her sister's court. Yet it was far bet- 
ter to keep Philip dangling as a suitor, than to part with him 
definitely, and this perhaps pleased Philip quite as well, for until 
his suit should be dismissed, Elizabeth at least would not support 
his enemies. He remained, therefore, ostensibly her friend, and 
in the final treaty with France, faithfully supported the English 
claims. 

The treaty of Cateau Cambresis, April 1559, marks the close 
of the long series of political wars which had been stirred up by 

the ambition of Charles YIII. From this date until 

jirrsisiiin! tlic treaty of Westphalia 1648, the wars of Europe are 

diUiins foi- no longer fought for mere political advantage, but 
lowing i 1559. o o ^ j. a > 

are dominated by the issues of the great religious con- 
troversy of the age. The French Henry II, survived the peace 
barely three months, sacrificed to the love of his people for the 
sport of the tourney. Francis II. succeeded to the throne 
and Mary Queen of Scots was thus also Queen of France. The 
union of the two crowns, however, did not last long. Francis 
died in 15G0 without issue and Mary returned to her own 
people. 

During the fifteen years in which Mary had dwelt in France, con- 
ditions in Scotland had been rapidly changing. The Eeformation 

had been given an enthusiastic support by both people 
mationiii and nobility. The nobles still enjoyed their old feudal 

privileges, and like the English nobles of the fifteenth 
century, could bring small armies of retainers into the field to defy 
the crown and the courts. The church was rich and corrupt, and 
naturally fearing the barons, sided with the crown in its struggle 
with its great subjects. The barons, therefore, were ready to take 



1559] - JOHN KNOX 593 

up the Eeformation as a new weapon against the crown, since 
they could thus strike down its strongest ally; but the bishops, 
encouraged by the turn of affairs in England during Mary's reign, 
were fully determined to arrest the spread of reforming heresies in 
Scotland, and had resorted to persecution. When, however, Eliza- 
beth ascended the English throne, the Protestants took fresh heart. 
A group of nobles signed a covenant, and styling themselves "the 
Lords of the Congregation," demanded the English Prayer Book 
and prepared to defend their faith. 

In 1559 the Scottish Protestants received an important 
accession to their ranks in the person of John Knox. Knox had 

been taken at St. Andrews Castle by the French in the 
John Knox, early days of Seymour's protectorate and sent to the 

galleys; later he had been chaplain to Edward VI., but 
on the incoming of the Catholic reaction had escaped to the con- 
tinent. At Geneva he came under the direct influence of John 
Calvin and adopted his views. From this safe retreat, also, he 
issued his fiery attack upon Mary, "The Monstrous Eegiment of 
Women." He was imperious, uncompromising, and of dauntless 
courage^- 4Vhen he returned to Scotland in 1559 he devoted all 
his terrible logical powers to the attack*' upon the prevailing cus- 
toms of the church. His eloquence was irresistible; his stinging 
satire, his hard scorn, lashed the people to frenzy. At Perth the 
vast congregation rose from one of his sermons to loot the cathe- 
dral, smashing the windows, ripping up the pictures, and demol- 
ishing the images. From Perth the frenzy of destruction spread 
over Scotland. The Queen Eegent, Mary of Guise, attempted to 
interfere; but the Lords of the Congregation sheltered and 
encouraged the iconoclasts. Open war broke out. The Regent 
called upon the French court for help. The Lords turned to 
Elizabeth, and proposed to her a match with the earl of Arran 
who stood next to Mary Stuart in the line of succession. But the 
high-spirited English queen found little to her liking in the weak- 
minded earl; moreover, the marriage would have been attended by 
an immediate attempt to dethrone Mary in Arran's interest, a step 
which Elizabeth knew would at once combine the Catholic powers 
of Europe against her. But beyond mere reasons of state Eliza- 



594 THE KEFORM ESTABLISHED [Elizabeth 

beth had little sympathy with the excesses of the Congregation; 
she hated Presbyterianism, detested Knox, and was suspicious of 
rebels of all kinds. Yet she could not permit the French to regain 
control of Scotland. She agreed, therefore, against her inclina- 
tion, to assist the Lords to drive out the French, but they must 
remain loyal to their queen. In July 1500 the Treaty of Edin- 
burgh afforded a momentary settlement, compelling the expulsion 
of the French and securing toleration for the Protestants. The 
Scottish reformers, however, were not the kind of men to be satis- 
fied with half measures, and taking advantage of the recent death 
of the Queen Regent proceeded to attack the legal foundations of 
the church, and by act of parliament swept away the old church 
establishment and enjoined the Calvinistic form in its place. The 
Lords thus far had supported the reform partly for political rea- 
sons and partly because they desired to plunder the church as the 
English Lords had done in the reigns of Henry and Edward. 
When, however, the time came to enjoy the spoils, they found an 
insurmountable obstacle in John Knox, who had no desire to see 
the churcli stripped to satisfy the greed of the nobles, and threw 
all his fiery energy into the new struggle between the reformed 
clergy and the Lords of the Congregation. 

Things were at this pass when Mary returned to her kii]gdom 
in August 150L She was a gay, light-hearted girl of nineteen, 

highly cultured, full of the spirit of the French renais- 
Kmm"'^'^ sance, and with an irresistible way of drawing the hearts 

of those who came in contact with her, very marked in 
contrast with the cold and haughty Elizabeth. Her intellectual 
powers also were as marked; she could plot with Italian cunning 
and possessed withal the courage and will to carry out her 
schemes; but unfortunately she was not mistress of her passions. 
She professed herself willing to tolerate Protestantism and asked 
only that Protestants tolerate her in turn. To this the Lords 
assented, but Knox, the watch-dog of the new Scottish church, cried 
out in horror against it, declaring that one mass was "more fear- 
ful unto him than ten thousand armed enemies." Between Knox 
and such as Mary there could be neither sympathy nor compro- 
mise. 



1560] PEACE POLICY OF ELIZABETH 595 

An era of turmoil and strife followed. Elizabeth's sympathies 
were with her sister monarch ; her monarchical instincts always 

strong with her, as with her father, forbade her to 
Eiizabeth'x encourage rebellion. But Mary claimed to be by right 
Mary. of birth the legitimate heir to the English throne after 

Mary Tudor, and this claim she would not surrender, 
unless Elizabeth would recognize her as her successor. This, 
however, Elizabeth would not do ; her Protestant subjects feared 
the Scottish queen and had no wish to see another Catholic Mary 
on the English throne. Elizabeth contented herself, therefore, 
with encouraging the Scottish Lords in order to keep Mary busy 
at home and prevent the formation of a party in her favor in 
England; for the English Catholics were just as fearful of a 
Protestant succession and looked to Mary for the solution of their 
troubles. 

The English parliament thought to settle the troublesome 
question by finding a husband for Elizabeth and more tlian once 

petitioned her on the subject ; she answered graciously 
The proposed hut cvasively, and continued to keep her suitors waiting. 
EUzabetfi In 1501 it was supposed that she was about to marry 

Lord Robert Dudley, her first favorite, the handsome 
but worthless son of the late duke of Northumberland. 

For the first ten years of her reign, Elizabeth steadily persisted 
in her purpose to remain at peace. "No war, my lords," was her 

oft-repeated rejoinder at the council board. Her gov- 
^/EV^b^tf srnment had been peaceful and economical. The 

conntry was recovering rapidly from the disorder which 
had confronted her on her accession. She restored the coinage in 

1560 and recovered the credit of the government. She 
^'ilo^^d repaired and garrisoned her fortresses and once more 

September, brought the navy up to a respectable footing. More- 
over, her studied policy of conciliation and her persist- 
ent refusal to side with extremists had created a new national party 
who put their interests as Englishmen over against those of church 
or party, and who were increasing every year in strength and num- 
ber. Her policy of shielding herself from foreign attack behind 
the rivalry of France and Spain had also succeeded. As the 



596 THE KEFORM ESTABLISHED [Elizabeth 

Reformation progressed and both states were weakened by revolts 
of their Protestant subjects, the prospect of interference became 
even more remote. It was Elizabeth's policy, moreover, without 
committing herself, to encourage Protestants on the continent as in 
Scotland. She particularly feared the Guises, who led the Cath- 
olic nobility against the Huguenots, and who as uncles of the Scot- 
tish queen were ready to support her in pressing her claims to the 
English throne. In 15G2, the French queen mother, the famous 
Catharine de Medici, attempted to give the Huguenots religious 
toleration, but was bitterly opposed by the Guises. The result 
was a civil war, in which Elizabeth gave some assistance to the 
Huguenots and received Havre in pledge. The war, however, was 
not creditable to English arms and in 15G4 Elizabeth retired from 
the struggle. And, although she continued cautiously to encour- 
age the Huguenots when opportunity offered, it became more 
definitely than ever her policy to keep out of war with France as 
well as Spain. 

The same policy which led Elizabeth to interfere in the strug- 
gle of the Huguenots led her also to adopt stricter measures in 
restraining her Catholic subiects at home. Their sym- 
Eiizaheth pathies Were naturally roused by the convulsion which 

toward the ^ ^. .-^ ii---, i 

Catholics of was distracting !• rance and their attitude was becoming 
more aggressive. ihe violent Protestants were also 
urging the government forward. The Act of 1562 which com- 
pelled all teachers, all university students, all lawyers and all law 
officers, and all members of the House of Commons, to take the 
oath of supremacy, not only rid the government of annoying 
obstructionists, but made the Commons more strongly Protestant 
tlian ever. The next year parliament advanced another step in 
adding to the Prayer Book the Thirty-Nine Articles, which were 
based on the forty-two articles of Edward VI. and broadly defined 
the doctrines of the Anglican Church, robbing the Catholics of 
the shelter of the ambiguity of Elizabeth's Prayer Book. 

These measures, however, were not radical enough to satisfy 
the ultra Protestants and the same year an unseemly and bitter 
controversy arose within the Protestant ranks over the continued 
use of vestments in the church service. Extreme Protestants, 



1565] THE PURITANS 597 

soon to be known as Puritans, objected to continuing the forms 
or ceremonies, which had been inherited from the old church. 
They objected to the Prayer Book, because it had been taken from 

the old Mass Book; they objected to kneeling at the 
Division in Sacramental scrvice, bccause the act appeared like an 
tanFranitg adoration of the Host; they objected to the sign of 
The Puritans. \^^Q cross at baptism, because it seemed to them like 

an incantation more worthy of paganism than Chris- 
tianity. They objected also to the claim of archbishop or bishop to 
the possession of any special spiritual powers. The great body of 
Puritans had no thought at first of separating themselves from 
the Anglican Church but sought to continue the reform within 
the national church, replacing the episcopacy by a government of 
synods and elders after the Genevan or Presbyterian model. One 

section, however, known as Separatists, rejected both 
The Sep- forms of church organization and taught that the only 

form sanctioned in the Scriptures was the Congrega- 
tional, based upon the independence of each body of believers. 

Elizabeth had no sympathy with Puritanism, The quarrel 
over forms and vestments exasperated her, but she needed the 

Puritans and knew that they were not to be trifled 
ancitiie with. After an attempt in 1505 to compel them to 

Puvito/iis, 

conform, she determined to put up with their vagaries 
and to give her attention to the more serious problems which 
immediately threatened her throne and which warned her to be 

tolerant of Puritanism. In 1563 the famous Council of 
(if Trent, Trent had finished its work. It had become evident to 

1545-1563. 

the leaders of the old church that it was useless to 
attempt to find any common ground of compromise which would 
satisfy the reformers, short of the abandonment of the papal sys- 
tem and the fundamental doctrines of the Catholic Church. Yet 
it was. possible to reform the abuses within the church, the out- 
growth of feudal influence largely, which had been a cause of grief 
to good Catholics long before they had^ been made the object of 
attack by Protestants. There was, however, to be no wavering in 
restating the accepted doctrines of the church or in reaffirming the 
papal supremacy, and upon this basis arose the movement known 



598 THE REFORM ESTABLISHED [Elizabeth 

as the Coiinter-Eeformation which was destined to save Catholicism 

in Europe. Its success was largely due to the devoted energy of 

the "Company of Jesus," a new order, which had been 

The Com- established by Ignatius Loyola in 1540. The members 

pany of Jesus. J t> J 

were devoted to the restoration of the clinrch; and to 
this end they preached, and taught, and sent out missionaries, trained 
and disciplined to act with the promptness and unquestioning 
obedience of the soldier. It was this powerful Catholic 
Purttami^m I'^actiou on the continent, which had been thus success- 
fully inaugurated, that now aroused Elizabeth by its 
aggressive vigor and inclined her to look with more tolerance upon 
the demand of the Puritans for stricter laws in restraining Cath- 
olics. 

Thus far Mary had managed to hold her own in Scotland; but 

in 1565 she determined upon a course which ultimately united 

Elizabeth, England, and the Scottish people against 

Mary's un- her. By marrying for her second husband Henry 

fortunate j j n j 

love affairs. Stuart, Lord Darnley, the son of her father's half- 
sister, she hoped to unite the two lines of Stuart 
succession and strengthen her cause. Darnley was weak and 
vicious, without capacity for politics, personally objectionable to 
Elizabeth, and a Catholic. But Mary, blind to all peril, deaf to 
all entreaties, for the moment was infatuated with her tall and 
handsome cousin, only to repent later of her impetuous folly. The 
foolish youth proved himself so unworthy of the queen's confi- 
dence that she refused to allow him to be crowned at her side. He 
turned for comfort to the Scottish lords, who persuaded him that 
the queen's secretary, an Italian named David Rizzio, was his rival 
in the queen's affections, and so worked upon him, that, crazed 
with jealousy, one evening in March 15G6, supported by a band of 
Protestant lords, he broke into Mary's drawing-room. The 
unhappy secretary was seized, dragged from the queen's presence 
and stabbed to death. In less than a year Darnley himself was 
assassinated by the connivance of the earl of Bothwell, a wild, law- 
less nature, who was allowed not only to secure an acquittal by 
overawing his judges, but to carry off Mary and marry her, 
apparently with her consent. ^ 



1567-1577] FALL OF MAEY QUEEN OF SCOTS 599 

This act of Bothwell was Mary's death warrant. All Scotland 

believed that she had herself planned the mnrder of her husband 

and had willinffly sriven herself to Bothwell. The 

Fall of Marti 

Queen of people rose against her and in June 1567, Bothwell's 

retainers having deserted him, Mary surrendered to the 
Lords at Oarberry Hill. Bothwell escaped to Orkney and after a 
wandering life was seized by the Danes and finally died in prison in 
1577. Mary was brought to Edinburgh amid the execrations of 
the people, and shut up in Lochleven Castle; Darnley's son James, 
a child one year old, was proclaimed King of Scotland, In May 

1568 Mary succeeded in making her escape, and sum- 
Maf^i3%68 ^^^^^S ^^^ Catholics to her side, attempted to regain 

her crown. Bnt she was defeated at Langside near 
Glasgow, and compelled once more to flee from the face of her 
angry people. 

In Scotland there was no longer resting place or safety for the 
unhappy queen; in her despair she determined to present herself 

at the threshold of lier sister sovereign and rival, and 
EUzahlth appeal to her for protectimr'aiid support. Elizabeth 

pretended to investigate the matter and called upon the 
Scottish lords to justify their act of rebellion. In reply, they pro- 
duced a casket of letters, alleged to have been written by Mary to 
Bothwell which if genuine proved her complicity in Darnley's 
murder. Genuine or not, Mary refused to answer the charge or 
to recognize the commission which had been appointed virtually to 
try her. She refused also to abdicate in favor of her son, or make 
any concessions to her rebellious subjects. Elizabeth could not 
bring herself to give up Mary to her subjects; she dared not offend 
them by releasing her. Almost against her will, therefore, she 
was led to confine the exile at Tutbury. Mary's beauty, her wit, 
her fascinating ways, her misfortunes, made her a dangerous 
prisoner. Thomas Duke of Norfolk, the son of the earl of Sur- 
rey, one of Henry VIII. 's last victims, had already become infatu- 
ated, and encouraged by the support of a number of Catholic 
nobles, including Thomas Percy Earl of Northumberland and 
Charles Neville Earl of Westmoreland, ^oroposed to marry Mary, 
who was to be acknowledged as Elizabeth's successor. Elizabeth 



600 THE EEFOEM ESTABLISHED [Elizabeth 

promptly threw Norfolk into prison, whereupon an insurrection led 
by JSTorthumberland and Westmoreland broke out in the Catholic 
north. But Elizabeth was too quick for the malcontent nobles. 
She suppressed the revolt with cruelty and severely punished those 
engaged in it ; every market town between the Wharfe and Tyne was 
graced with a group of hanging rebels. Northumberland escaped 
to Scotland but was delivered to Elizabeth and executed in 1572. 

The time had now come_ when no amount of skillful fencing 

could longer delay the crisis which had been threatening Elizabeth 

ever since her accession to the throne. In February 

l^thl^eyi^if'' ^^'^^ P^P® ^^^^^ ^' issued the long expected bull of 
<if EJizabdh's excommunication and deposition, freeing all the sub- 
jects of Elizabeth from their oath of allegiance and in 
the minds of many not only Justifying open rebellion but the 
secret plot of the assassin. Elizabeth was now strong in the confi- 
dence of the great part of her poojile; yet this loyalty had never 
been put to the test and the open declaration of war by the pope 
caused no small anxiety on the part of the queen and her council- 
lors, and naturally roused suspicion and distrust of all her Catholic 
subjects. She had, however, little cause for alarm. Scotland 
was now committed not only to the Eeformation but to an alliance 
with England as well. Mary the only rival whom she might fear 
was in her hands. The Catholic government of France was strug- 
gling to retain its position against the rising power of the Hugue- 
nots. Spain was fully occupied in maintaining her hold upon the 
Netherlands, where her subjects under the lead of William of 
Orange had arisen against her civil and ecclesiastical tyrannies. 
Elizabeth, therefore, had nothing to fear from either France or 
Spain; yet it seamed good policy to make friends if possible, and 
the subject of a foreign marriage was once more broached. In 1571 
the negotiations seemed at last about to bear fruit in a union 
with the duke of Alen9on, the youngest brother of Charles IX. It 
is not at all likely that Elizabeth was any more serious now than 
before, but for eleven years she managed to retain the avowed 
friendship of France; the little duke of Alen9on, whom Elizabeth 
playfully called her frog, came and went, her recognized suitor, 
Elizabeth always contriving to find excuse for delaying the mar- 



1572] THE RIDOLFI PLOT 601 

riage and in the meantime enjoying the full benefit of a French 
alliance as a foil to the threatening attitude of Spain. In case of 
attack, either country was to assist the other; they were also not 
to interfere ia Scottish aifairs nor allow any one else to do so. 

•In 1573 the excommunication bore its first fruits in the Eidolfi 
plot, ISTorfolk had been spared in 1569, but learning little wisdom 

from failure he had continued his plotting, carrying on 
ThcRidnifl, ^^ treasonable correspondence with Duke x\lva in the 

Netherlands through an Italian broker named Eidolfi. 
Eidolfi lived in London but his business often carried him to the 
continent and it was thought that he would thus escape suspicion. 
But Cecil, now Lord Burghley, early learned of the plot and 
shadowed the conspirators until he had obtained evidence sufficient 
to establish the charge of treason, fully implicating Norfolk, 
Mary, and others. Norfolk was seized and put to death. 

Before 1571 Elizabeth had not summoned a parliament for 
nearly five years. She had avoided parliaments as the simplest 

way of preventing the radical views of the Puritans 
mentof\%'i ^^'^m coming to the front. But it seemed necessary 

after the bull of excommunication to give Europe some 
new evidence of the loyalty of her people and accordingly in the 
spring of 1571 she called a parliament together. It was over- 
whelmingly Protestant, for the Supremacy Act had barred out the 
Catholics; nor did it take long to pass laws against the bringing 
of papal bulls and other paj)al documents into the kingdom. 
When the Eidolfi plot was exposed in 1572 parliament also promptly 
petitioned for the execution of Norfolk and passed a bill of 
attainder against Mary. Elizabeth, however, had no thought of 
sanctioning the latter measure ; she was quite satisfied to have her 
enemies know that she stood between them and the vengeance of 
the nation. 

After the execution of Norfolk, a long period of tranquillity 
followed. Even the massacre of St. Bartholomew, though it 

stirred up intense bitterness in England, was not allowed 
frangnffl'4. *° disturb Elizabeth's friendly relations with the 

French court. The Spaniards continued their desper- 
ate struggle in the Netherlands and so far from molesting England 



602 THE REFORM ESTABLISHED [Elizabeth 

were not even able to retaliate for the injuries inflicted by English 
pirates or the encouragement which Elizabeth gave to Philip's rebel- 
lions subjects. Elizabeth, however, still had no wish for open war 
with Spain, and in 1575 declined the sovereignty of Holland and 
Zealand, which was offered her by the Netherlanders. The rest- 
lessness of the Puritans caused her no little uneasiness, not because 
she doubted their loyalty, but because they were for driving on tbe 
chariot of reform. The parliament of 1572 had proposed further 
changes in the Prayer Book. The Puritan body, also, had sent in a 
formal "Admonition to Parliament," in which they demanded the 
abolition of episcopacy and attacked the church courts, includ- 
ing the Court of High Commission. But Elizabeth was not to be 
hurried and bade her parliament cease the discussion of such sub- 
jects. 

It was impossible, however, to keep the people from thinking 
and talking, and outside of parliament the Puritans were steadily 
gaining ground. The queen was particularly annoyed 
PmilmUsm ^^ their meetings for "prophesying, " where it was cus- 
tomary for the clergy to take up for free discussion 
some text of Scripture in which the debaters were very apt at 
finding applications in existing political and religious conditions. 
She, therefore, ordered Griudal, who had succeeded Parker in 1576, 
to suppress such discussions. But Grindal was himself too much 
of a Puritan to wish to see the prophesyings stopped, and refused. 
Elizabeth straightway suspended liim from his office, and the 
offensive discussions ceased. 

I'he whole episode reveals the firm hand with which Elizabeth 
controlled her church. Her policy toward it was directed entirely 
Control of ^^ political motives; nor did she hesitate to plunder 
o^^^^the^^ quite as ruthlessly as Somerset. She left bishoprics 
church. vacant for years, while she put their revenues into her 

own treasury; she forced bishops to surrender large sums of money 
from their sees as well as a large part of the lands connected with 
them. The bishops remonstrated; many of Archbishop Par- 
ker's letters are wails of complaint against the robbery of the 
church. But complaints were useless; for Elizabeth had as little 
_ respect for the personal dignity of her bishops as for their estates. 



1577-1580 ] drake's voyage 603 

The relations of Spain and England during these years were 

often strained to the point of war. Elizabeth secretly assisted the 

Dutch, and Philip encouraged her subiects to rebellion. 

Relation of -^^ ' , ,-,,,, n o \ L.- 

Spain and jbach monarch suspected the other oi plotting assassina- 
tion; nor would either have grieved if some fanatic had 
attempted it. Spaniards killed Englishmen wherever they met 
them, and Englishmen hunted Spaniards up and down the high 
seas. Yet the two countries were nominally at peace; and the two 
monarchs were constantly exchanging fair words and large prom- 
ises. Elizabeth, however, continued to encourage her seamen to 
prey upon Spanish commerce; her eyes glistened with pleasure at 
tales of adventure in the Spanish seas, where English pirates 
boarded the great galleons and turned their tons of precious metal 
towards English ports. In this half legalized piracy the peo- 
ple also took a deep patriotic interest; the names of Drake, 
Hawkins, and Frobisher, were honored at every English fire- 
side. In 1577 Drake sailed for the Pacific, sacked towns and 
cities along the coast of South America, seized and scuttled 
Spanish ships, and at last, after planting the English flag in Cali- 
fornia and sailing clear round the world, entered Plymouth in 1580 
with his ship heavily loaded with gold, silver, and precious stones. 
The Spanish ambassador demanded justice, and Elizabeth protested 
that he should have it, while Drake sunned himself in the wrath of 
the great queen, divided his treasure with her, and laughed at the 
vengeance of the Spaniard. It was piracy, pure and simple; but it 
was a great school for the training of a navy, and it cost nothing. 
In retaliation for English piracy, Philip offered assistance to 
the Irish, who were as usual in arms against England. Queen 
Mary had planned to settle Irish affairs by the intro- 
PMUo^to"'^ duction of English colonists and a vigorous suppres- 
'/Str'*^ sion of the Irish in their favor; so little had the 
religious quarrel yet obscured the original race quarrel. 
Her plan, however, had not been inaugurated save in the counties 
of Kings and Queens. Through Elizabeth's reign the old struggle 
still smouldered, and in 1580 Philip attempted to fan the embers 
into new flame by sending over a large Spanish force to furnish a 
rallying point for the discontented Irish. But the Spaniards were 



604 THE REFOEM ESTABLISHED [elizabeth 

quickly routed and the danger of Spanish interference in Ireland 
passed by. The English ferocity towards everything Irish, how- 
ever, did not cease. Edmund Spenser, the poet, has left a piti- 
ful picture of the sufferings of the people: "Out of every cor- 
ner of the woods and glens they came creeping forth upon their 
hands, for their legs could not bear them; they spoke like ghosts 
crying out of their graves ; they did eat the dead carrions, happy 
where they could find them." 

Elizabeth had now reigned twenty-two years, Dnring the first 
ten years she had maintained a judicious spirit of conciliation 

towards her subjects of all creeds. She had frowned 
and^hf^^ upon cxtravagauce of all kinds, and as long as her 
jesm^^^^"'^ people observed the laws outwardly she left them to 

themselves. Bat during the s'econd decade it had become 
increasingly diflicult to sustain this judicious course,— due mainly 
to the changing tone of Catholicism itself. Hundreds of English 
subjects had fled to Spain and other Catholic countries, where they 
found ready sympathy among their fellow religionists; many also 
had come directly under the influence of the Company of Jesus 
and committed their lives to the work of restoring Catholicism in 
those countries which had lapsed from the old faith. Chief among 
the English members of the order v/as William Allen, a graduate 
of Oxford, who in 15G8 had founded at Douai in the Netherlands 
a college for the training of secular clergy. In 1578 he began to 
send over his missionaries to England to attack Protestantism in 
its stronghold. The first of these were Eobert Parsons and 
Edmund Campion. Parsons was cool, calculating, and self-pos- 
sessed. Campion was an enthusiast, but singularly pure-minded, 
modest, and gentle. Both men began their work, but each in his 
own way. Parsons took to political plotting, while Campion 
labored for the conversion of Englishmen. By the law it was a 
dangerous thing to celebrate the mass, or to say aught against 
royal supremacy; it was treason. Heretofore, however, while 
Elizabeth had left the sword suspended, she had been careful not 
to execute the terrible penalty. But the renewed agitation roused 
the government to action. More stringent laws were passed 
against the Catholics. The maximum fine which might be levied 



1578] 



PEKSECUTIONS OF JESUITS 



605 



upon recusants, Catholics who refused to attend the Anglican 
service, was raised to £20 a mouth. An active search also was 
made for propagandist missionaries. Campion was taken and exe- 
cuted. Parsons escaped to the continent. The sword of perse- 
cution had again fallen, and from this time to the outbreak of the 
civil war in the next century, the Catholic clergy continued to 
exercise their functions at the peril of their lives. 

PROMINENT CONTEMPORARIES OF THE LATER TUDORS 
PKINCES 



FRANCE 

Francis I., d. 1547 
Henry II., d 1559 
Francis II. , d. 1560 
Charles IX., d. 1574 
Henry III., d. 1589 
Henry IV., d. 1610 



I., 1516-1556 
Philip II., d. 1598 
Philip III., 1598 — 



THE EMPIRE 

Charles, 

I v., 1519-1558 

Ferdinand I., 1558-1564 
Maximilian II., 1564- 

1576 
Rudolph II., 1576 — 



POPES 

Clement VII., 1523- 

1534 
Paul III., 1534-1550 
Julius III., 1550-1555 
Paul IV., 1555-15.59 
Pius IV., 1.559-1568 
Pius v., 1566-1^572 
Gregory XIIi., 

1572-1585 
Sixtus v., 1585-1590, 

etc. 



SCOTLAND 

James v., d. 1543 
Mary, 1542-1567, (d. 

1587) 
James VI., 1567-1625 



Ivan IV., the Terrible, 
d. 1584 



THE NETHERLANDS 

William the Silent, d. 

1584 



MEN NOT PRINCES 



ARCHBISHOPS OF 
CANTERBURY 

William Warham 1504-1533 
Thomas Cranmer, 1533-1556 
Kesinald Pole, 1556-1558 
Matthew Parker, 1.5.59-1576 
Kdnumd (4rindal, 1576-1583 
John Whitgift, 1583-1604 



CHANCELLORS OF ENG- 
LAND 

Thomas Wolsey, 151.5-1539 
Sir Thomas More, 1529-1532, 

(d. 1535) 
Thomas Wriothesley, 1544- 

1547 
Stephen Gardiner, 1553- 

1556 
Sir Nicholas Bacon, 1558- 

1579 



REFORMERS 

Tvndale, d. 1536 
Zivingli, d. 1.531 
Luther, d. 1546 
Loyola, d. 1556 
Calvin, d. 1564 



SCIENTISTS, DISCOVER- 
ERS, AND NAVIGATORS 

Albuquerque, d. 1515 
Vasco da Gama, d. 1524 
Copernicus, d. 1543 
Frobisher, d. 1594 
Drake, d. 1596 
Raleigh, d. 1618 



PAINTERS 



Leonardo da Vinci, d. 1519 
Raphael, d 1520 
Michael Angelo, d. 1563 



LITERARY MEN 

Spenser, d. 1599 
Shakspere, 1616 
Cervantes, d. 1616. 



OHAPTEE VII 

ELIZABETH; THE DUEL WITH SPAIN 

ELIZABETH, i5ti}-ir,03 

The year 1584 witnessed a marked change in Elizabeth's foreign 
policy. For twenty-six years she had persistently refused to allow 

England to be allured into war. She had continued to 
Gmiso/ YQn(\ the struggling Netherlanders aid, but sufficient 

only to keep the contest with Spain alive, and when the 
Spanish complained of her perfidy, she had coolly disclaimed the 
acts of her agents. In 1584, however, a crisis was rapidly 
approaching in the relation of parties on the continent, and Eliza- 
beth saw that self-defense required a more positive interference on 
her part. The death of Alen^on in June had left the Huguenot 
Henry of Navarre the heir to the French throne, and in their alarm 
the French Catholics had once more taken up arms. The death 
of Alen9on, moreover, had virtually dissolved the long alliance of 
England and France, and in the event of Catholic snccess France 
was almost certain to join with Spain against England. If this 
were not enongh to stir Elizabeth out of her negative policy, the 
assassination of William of Orange on July 10, by leaving the 
Netherlanders without a leader, promised to end the Dutch war in 
Philip's favor, and Elizabeth knew well that with France distracted 
by civil war and the Netherlanders crushed, Philip would turn upon 
her in order to punish her for the piracies of her people and her 
encouragement to his rebellious subjects. The Dutch appealed to 
Elizabeth to put herself at the head of a Protestant league. Such 
a responsibility was by no means to her liking, yet she saw that at 
all hazards the Dutch must be supported; the Armada was already 
casting its shadows across the southern horizon. 

At home, also, the friends of the imprisoned Q,ueen of Scots, 
with persistent faith in their cause, had continued to plot for the 

606 



1584-1586] DEATH OF MART QUEEN OF SCOTS 607 

destruction of Elizabeth, and the complicity of Mendoza, the 
Spanish ambassador, in one of these plots had led to his dismissal 
in June. When, a few weeks later, the news reached 
Marian England of the success of the plot against William of 

at home. Orange, the excitement knew no bounds, and in Novem- 

ber bore fruit in a widely extended patriotic league, or 
association, for the defense of the queen. Catholic Englishmen as 
well as Protestants joined the league and swore to defend the 
queen with life, and goods, and if she were assassinated, to hold 
responsible the person benefited by the act. The "person" 
referred to in these ambiguous terms was of course Mary Queen of 
Scots. In 1585 parliament legalized the association, and in 
August Elizabeth definitely broke with Spain by openly entering 
into a treaty with the Dutch ; in January she sent an armed expe- 
ditioli to the Netherlands. 

Little came of this first open essay of Elizabeth against Spain. 
The chief incident of the expedition was the death at Zutphen, of 
the young Sir Philip Sidney distinguished as diploma- 
UontotM^' ^^^^' soldier, and poet. His fame to-day rests upon the 
Netherlands, Arcadia. Kobert Dudley, the earl of Leicester, had 
been put in command of the expedition. He was no 
match, however, for the duke of Parma, the renowned soldier 
who confronted him, and returned in a few months, having done 
little for the Netherlands and embarrassed the qneen by accepting 
in her name, but greatly to her disgust, the title and powers of 
governor-general. 

It would seem that the temper of the country and the increas- 
ing severity of the late acts of parliament ought to 'have warned 
Mary's friends of the danger of further plotting against 

TheBahinq- ,, ,.„ j. -r^,- ^ ^ ^ . f 

ton plot and the lite 01 Elizabeth. But in 1586 a new plot, more 

death of , , i i . , 

Mary Queen serious than aiiv vet unearthed, was brought to light: 
of Scots. , . "^ ^ ^ 

the conspirators were arrested and pat to death. But 

unfortunately for Mary, two letters written by her to Anthony 
Babington, the chief conspirator, and commending his plot, fell 
into the hands of Elizabeth's secretary, Sir Francis Walsingham. 
Parliament had already in the previous year, passed an act in gen- 
eral but unambiguous terms, empowering the appointment of a 



608 THE DUEL WITH SPAIN [Elizabeth 

commission to try Mary in case she should be privy to a plot for 
the assassination of Elizabeth, It was evident enough that her 
existence was a constant encouragement to plotters like Babington, 
and with a Spanish invasion threatening, it was hardly good policy 
to forbear longer. Yet there were serious legal technicalities- in 
the way of a trial ; Mary was not a subject of Elizabeth ; moreover 
she had appealed to her as an exile. Even were she subject to the 
laws of England her part in the Babington plot could hardly be 
deemed by an ordinary conrt of law worthy of death. The com- 
mission, however, found her guilty of complicity, and a few days 
later parliament by formal vote petitioned that the sentence of 
death be carried out. Elizabeth signed the death warrant, but 
refused to authorize the execution. Finally, the~ council, perceiv- 
ing that the queen was determined to shirk all responsibility for 
the deed, gave orders for the execution, and on the 8th of Eeb- 
ruary 1587, Mary, after nineteen years of captivity, was beheaded 
at Fotheringay. Elizabeth immediately disclaimed the act and 
with unspeakable meanness, fined and dismissed Secretary Davison 
who had acted as the instrument of the council. As for the 
nation, the news of Mary's death was everywhere received as the 
news of a victory; bells were rung and bonfires were lighted. A 
great sense of relief came over the people. The last fear of civil 
war had been dispelled. 

If, however, the strength of conspiracy had been broken at 
home by the execution of Mary, the expediency of the measure was 

by no means justified by the effect abroad. The news 
i^fMari^s ^^ Mary's death was received at first with incredulity 
Tbroad^ an'cl then, when rumor passed into certainty, with a 

cry for vengeance. In Paris the people raved against 
the perfidious queen; at Home the pope solemnly proclaimed a 
crusade against the heretic monarch; in Spain preparations were 
made for a holy war against the archenemy of the Catholic faith. 
Philip, moreover, had special grounds for taking up the bloody 
scarf of the fallen queen. In tlie shadow of the scaffold she had 
sent him a last message enjoining war with England as "God's 
quarrel and worthy of his greatness," and named Philip's daughter, 
descended from John of Gaunt by her mother Philip's third wife, 



1587, 1588] THE AEMADA 609 

heir to her claim to the English throne. Philip saw himself, there- 
fore, confronted with a threefold quest: the avenging of innocent 
blood, the chastisement of the spoilers of the church, and the 
championship of his daughter's claim to the English throne. 
Thus, while the execution of Mary had removed the danger of civil 
war, it had united all Elizabeth's foreign enemies and precipitated 
the straggle which had been approaching for twenty years. 

Philip at once turned with serious purpose to prepare a huge 
armament for the invasion of England. Elizabeth, however, had 

no thought of waiting for the blow to fall before she 
ofplvaip^"^ began action. Though war had not yet been declared, she 
fo^^war, dispatched Drake with a little fleet of twenty-fom- sail 

to watch the Spanish coast. With a boldness that 
astounded Europe he ran into the harbor of Cadiz and, in spite of 
the forts, burned the ships building there for the English expedi- 
tion and destroyed immense quantities of naval stores. He also 
made an attempt to enter the Tagus where other ship-building was 
going on. The destruction of Philip's shipping compelled him to 
postpone his expedition until the next year. With the humorous 
bravado characteristic of Shakspere's England, Drake called his 
exploit "singeing the King of Spain's beard." 

Philip pushed on his work with redoubled energy, and in 1588 
the great Armada was at last ready to sail. It was Philip's plan 

to have the fleet act in conjunction with the duke of 
pmiv^ Parma, who was to tlirow an army of 30,000 men into 

tmSr^ England from the Netherlands. This army had 

actually been gatliered in the preceding year, but when 
the Armada finally sailed, it had dwindled to 17,000 men. The 
fleet consisted of 132 vessels of war and some 40 transports, 
manned by 7,400 sailors and 19,000 soldiers. No expense had been 
spared; the expedition was also immensely popular ; the best blood 
of Spain was represented on the decks. In England great dismay 
took possession of all classes, when once it was known that the 
huge Armada had actually spread her wings over the ocean, and 
was drawing nearer with' every swelling breeze. And yet the 
danger was by no means as serious as the people imagined or as 
tradition has reported. The armament of Philip was greatly 



610 THE DUEL WITH SPAIN [ 



Elizabeth 



inferior in real fighting efficiency to the fleet which Elizabeth had 
prepared to meet it. The English vessels were of an improved 
type, developed out of the piracies of the last twenty years ; they 
sailed mnch faster than the Spanish high-deckers, and were more 
easily managed ; they Avere also better officered and more effectually 
manned. They carried heavier guns and more of them, and could 
fire three shots to the Spaniards' one. The English gunners, also, 
far outclassed the Spaniards as marksmen. As one of Drake's 
captains wrote, "Twelve of lier Majesty's ships were a match for 
all of the galleys in the king of Spain's dominions ;" and here were 
not twelve but 197 of these formidable crafts to meet the 132 of 
Philip. 

To supplement these preparations to meet the fleet at sea, an 
army of 16,000 men was gathered at Tilbury to defend London, and 
another army of 30,000 was mustered in the midland 
of EUzahcth counties; it was also arranged that upon the first 
PhiiipJnj appearance of the Armada within the narrow seas, 
beacon fires should be kindled from every hillside in the 
kingdom and every shire should summon its militia into the field; 
that is, practically the whole male population of England were to 
be called out to confront the Spaniard, the moment he should set 
foot upon English soil. The English fleet had been divided into 
two squadrons; the one under Lord Henry Seymour, the youngest 
son of the Protector, lay off the Netherlands blockading its ports; 
the other under Lord Charles Howard, grandson of the hero of 
Flodden, supported by Drake, Hawkins, and Frobisher, lay at 
Plymouth guarding the entrance to the Channel. 

The Spanish Admiral Medina Sidonia had been ordered to 
avoid Plymouth, but for some unexplained reason, on July 20, he 
passed by within easy reach of the town; the English 
tionofthe captains at once saw their advantage and in their fleet 
crafts put out in pursuit. AYith the weather gauge in 
their favor they could follow the huge galleons at will, peppering 
away at them with perCect impunity and darting swiftly out of 
reach when a Spaniard turned and attempted to close. The two 
fleets moved slowly up the Channel, keeping up a running fight 
until they reached Calais on the 27th. Medina Sidonia expected 



1588] WRECK OF THE ARMADA 611 

to find Parma waiting for liim at Dnnkirlv; but Parma was still at 
Bruges and nothing was ready. This was bad enough, bat the 
English had followed their quarry to cover, and now, hovering in the 
offing, showed no inclination to allow the Spaniards to wait until 
Parma had retrieved his neglect, or his blunder. On the night of 
the 29th, taking advantage of a northeast wind, they drove a fleet 
of fire ships into the harbor among the crowded Spanish ship- 
ping, throwing the crews into confusion, and enabling the English 
to follow up their success by a direct attack in the morning. As 
night drew down, the day was going against the enemy; the same 
wind which had brought in the fire ships, was steadily crowding 
the Spaniards upon the Flemish shoals and the Armada bade fair 
to end its career then and there, when the wind veered and 
enabled the distressed galleons to stand out into the North Sea. 
The Spaniards were now thoroughly disheartened; Parma and 
his army of invasion had failed them; their ammunition had been 

exhausted ; the crews had suffered serious losses and 
to round the Surviving ships had been severely strained by the 

experiences of the past Aveek. All thought of descend- 
ing upon the English coast was abandoned; yet they durst not 
again brave the Channel in their crippled condition. There was 
no help for it; and so they sailed away into the North Sea in the 
vain hope of reaching home by rounding the northern headlands of 
Scotland and passing down the west coast of Ireland. The same 
ill luck, however, pursued them to the end. The English had 
long since exhausted the ammunition, which the government in 
accordance with the miserly policy of Elizabeth had doled out in 
pitiably inadequate quantities, and had given up the chase, but 
gale after gale broke upon the now doomed Armada. The coasts 
of Norway, Scotland, and Ireland, were littered with the wreckage. 
Two thousand corpses were counted on the beach of Sligo Bay. 
Of the 172 vessels which had so proudly sailed out of the harbors 
of Spain in the early summer, only fifty-three, shattered and use- 
less, ever reached a Spanish port again. Philip bore his misfor- 
tunes with a spirit worihy of a king: "I sent you out," he said, 
as the fugitives came crawling back, "to war with men and not 
with elements.'" In England the fate of the Armada was greeted 



612 THE DUEL WITH SPAIN" [Elizabeth 

with transports of unbounded joy; to the faithful it seemed that 

as in oldeu times, God had marshalled the "stars in their courses" 

to fight for his people, and in the overthrow of the Spaniard had 

vindicated the cause of the righteous. 

The power of Spain had long been overstrained by the task 

which she had assumed of arbitrating the destinies of two hemi- 

„», spheres. But until the failure of her boasted Armada 

the failure f^]^Q fatal secret had not been divined by her foes. 'Now, 
of the -J ' 

Armada. however, the spell of her great name was broken; the 
English became more daring than ever and began a series of attacks 
upon the exposed coasts, which Philip was helpless to ward off. 
He sued for peace; but the English had no thought of allowing 
their prostrate foe to rise, now that they had discovered his weak- 
ness and had him at their mercy; they had too long feared him 
to play the magnanimous. They smote again and again, and when 
Philip died in September 1598, the war was still raging. 

At home the dispelling of the Spanish phantom which had so 
long overshadowed the land, gave opportunity for the full play of 
party animosities; and soon it was evident that Eng- 
The"Mar- land had purchased immunity from foreign attack, only 
Tracts" at the expense of that unanimity which had made her 
heretofore invincible. In the very year of the overthrow 
of the Armada a bitter assault was made upon the bishops in a 
series of pamphlets called the "Martin Marprelate Tracts," the 
authors of whicli Avere Separatists. The government replied by 
active persecution; some of the Separatists were hanged and many 
others were driven from the country. Puritans, anxious as they 
were for reform, were bitterly opposed to the acts of the Separatists. 
It was not only, however, that the various sects of the reform 
began to assert themselves more persistently than ever, but parlia- 
ment, the very stronghold of Tudor absolutism, also 
Elizabeth bcffau to show sigus of restlessness and an unmistakable 

and her ° ^ 

later pariia- disposition to reopen the contest with the crown for 
ancient rights, now too long not denied but held in abey- 
ance. Elizabeth had made use of parliaments more freely than 
any of her predecessors since the days of Henry VI. It was not 
because she loved them more, but the uncertainties of her position 



1571-1601] MONOPOLIES AND PATENTS 613 

had forced her to lean often upon the nation, and give to the workl 
arraj'ed against her the oft repeated evidence of the loyalty of her 
people; if legal technicalities cast a shadow across her right to the 
throne, she was undoubtedly the nation's choice. Elizabeth fully 
appreciated the moral effect of this fact, and when once the reli- 
gious question was settled, took no important step without first 
giving her parliament an opportunity to set the pace. It was part 
of her statecraft. The consciousness of parliament of its own dig- 
nity had naturally increased as a result of this renewed activity, and 
had expressed itself, as naturally, in a demand for the respect of its 
ancient privileges. As early as 1571, when the queen had ordered 
Strickland to absent himself from the House because he had dared 
to discuss ecclesiastical reforms, the House had shown so much 
feeling that she had withdrawn her command. In 1570, however, 
when Peter Wentworth claimed for the House perfect freedom of 
speech, he was silenced, and in 1593 the queen went so far as to 
arrest certain members for discussing forbidden topics. Thus the 
House was learning to reassert its old privileges of freedom from 
arrest and freedom of speech, and although the first steps were 
taken with evident timidity, and progress was slow, a new spirit 
was quickening into life, which had been unknown in the days of 
Henry YIII. 

In 1601 this spirit successfully expressed itself in a yet bolder 
protest on the subject of monopolies and patents. By long custom 
the government claimed the authority to grant to indi- 
mid^atmts '^itlnals or companies the sole right of making or deal- 
ing in a particular article, or of carrying on a specified 
trade. Thus in IGOO the East India Company had been given a 
monopoly of the trade with the East Indies. Some monopolies 
and most patents were commendable, since without them the trade 
in question could not be carried on, the goods could not bo manu- 
factured, or the new process or invention could not be introduced. 
The difficulty was that English monarchs had often granted 
monopolies and patents, where they were absolutely unnecessary 
and only served the purpose of filling the pockets of courtiers at 
the expense of the subjects. Such was the monopoly on playing- 
cards held by Sir Walter Raleigh. There were mono^Dolies also on 



614 THE DUEL WITH SPAIN [Elizabeth 

leather, salt, currants, iron, "ashes, bottles, bags, shreds of 
gloves," vinegar, coal, lard, oil, fish, and a hundred other com- 
modities. One angry member, on hearing the list read, had bitterly 
cried out, "Is not bread there?" and insisted that "if order be not 
taken for these, bread will be there before the next parliament." 
In 1601 the eyes of parliament were opened to the significance of 
the gi'ievance, and the members arrayed themselves in an ominous 
majority against the privileges which the queen had showered upon 
her subjects. One of the commoners in a quaint arraignment of 
the nuisance declared: "It bringeth the general profit into a 
private hand, and the end of all is beggary and bondage of the sub- 
jects." Elizabeth saw that she must yield, though at the begin- 
ning of parliament she had forbidden the Commons to debate the 
question. She now declared in a touching speech that the griev- 
ance should be am^ended, thanked the members for their zeal and 
kindness, and assured them of her good will and affection. "There 
will never queen sit in my seat," she asserted, "with more zeal to 
my country, or care to my subjects. . . . And though you have 
had, and may have, many princes more mighty and wise sitting in 
this seat, yet you never had, or shall liave, any that will be more 
careful and loving." 

After freeing the country from foreign danger, Elizabeth 
turned upon Ireland with more determination than ever. In 1594 
Bisinaof ^^^^ Irish of Ulster rose under Hugh O'Neill, Earl of 
O'Nemin Tyrone; Spain sent assistance the next year, and in 
Ireland. 1593, O'Neill inflicted a serious defeat upon the English 

at the Blackwater. Elizabeth sent to Ireland as her commander, 
the earl of Essex, her last favorite, a showy but inferior man. 
Essex was defeated by O'Neill and returned to England in disgrace. 

He had come home without leave which was equivalent to 

deserting his colors, and Elizabeth could not forgive the offense. 

The earl was thrown into prison and, though released 

Treason ■> o 

and death the next year, was permanently out of favor. Over- 
whelmed by his disgrace, he plotted to remove the 
queen's ministers by force and compel her to name others who 
would be devoted to his interests. It was a dangerous scheme, for 
to fail was to submit himself to the penalties of high treason. 



1G0M603J 



SIR FEATSTCIS BACON 615 



But Essex thought his grievances were such as to justify the wild- 
est hazard, and in 1601 he rode into London at the head of a few 
friends and called upon the citizens to rise in his favor. The call 
to arms, however, met with no response; h^ was seized, tried, and 
sent to the block. 

One of the queen's attorneys at the trial of the earl was Sir 
Francis Bacon, who, although he had been befriended by Essex, had 

now appeared against him. Bacon has been much blamed 
Bacm"'^^^^ -^^^ ^^^^' ^"^ without discrimination. He was a cold, 

and consequently an unpopular man ; he was witty and 
sarcastic, making few friends and many enemies; he was ambitious 
and not free from the sway of the meanest passions, especially the 
desire to shine as a line gentleman. He spent so much in show 
that he was forever borrowing and begging, demanding promo- 
tions, rewards, and offices, and leaving his honest debts unpaid. 
Notwithstaudi]]g these reprehensible features, Bacon was one of 
the great men of his day and deserves a place in the memory of 
mankind for his unselfish labors in the cause of science and 
humanity. He was a great lawyer, a politician, a man of the 
world, and above all a statesman, seeing clearly what was possible 
and what was not possible, and quite as clearly the means of attain- 
ing a desired end. 

The queen died in 1603 at the ripe age of seventy, revered 
and beloved by her people. Walsingham had preceded her in 

1590 and Burghley in 1598. Her last great minister 

Death of o j o 

Elizabeth, was Burghley's son Robert Cecil, later earl of Salisbury. 
In his hands the queen's cause was well served, and at 
her death he had made all things ready for her successor. 

Elizabeth's reign raised England to the first rank of European 
powers. She had been successful in war and prosperous in peace, 
and, under the confidence which she created, the English 
f/re^n"^^^^ people began to seek new and richer fields for the exer- 
cise of their energies. Of the men who were thus 
allured to careers of exploration and adventure, the name of Sir 
Walter Raleigh is perhaps the best known to Americans, He 
was a man of marvelous energy and ability, and has left a record 
as explorer, soldier, statesman, colonizer, and scholar. But 



616 THE DUEL WITH SPAIN [ewzabeth 

his bad qualities were quite as emineut as his good. He was cruel, 
domiueering, corrupt, and faithless; and at Elizabeth's death he 
was probably the most unpopular man in England. He made 
several attempts at colonization in America, chief of which was 
the expedition to Virginia in 1584, all unsuccessful but of value in 
preparing the way for the great era of colonization to follow. 
Among others who tried to colonize new lands or to open new 
avenues to commerce were Sir Humphrey Gilbert, who inspired 
the earlier schemes of Ealeigh; Sir John Hawkins, who introduced 
African slaves into the Spanish colonies of America; Drake also, 
famous for his exploits against the Spaniards and his voyage 
around the world; Frobisher, who sought for a northwest passage; 
Richard Chancellor, whose efforts to open up a northeast passage 
to India brought him to Moscow in 1553 and led the next year 
to the forming of the famous Moscovy Company, antedating by 
forty-six years the founding of the yet more famous East India 
Company. In England itself men were at no less important tasks. 
Sir Thomas Gresham founded the Eoyal Exchange in 1560, and 
put in operation a reform of the currency, which was successfully 
carried through by Elizabeth's ministers. 

The result of all this busy striving was the enrichment of Eng- 
land, and the further strengthening of the middle class which 
Henry VII. and Henry VIII. had done so much to foster. In 
the first parliament of James, it is estimated that the House of 
Commons represented three times the wealth of the House of Lords. 

Equally great Avere the literary triumphs of Elizabeth's reign. 
The early Tudor period had been comparatively barren. Sir 
Thomas More and the Bible translators, Tyndale and 
ii-!imi'2'K,,f Coverdale, have already been mentioned. Cranmer's 
reinn'^"'"^ power is sliowu in the Prayer Book of Edward. In 
poetry Skelton was popular; Wyatt and Surrey also 
had won unfading laurels before they staked their lives in the 
mad game of politics. These, however, were only pioneers; 
their work, an earnest of what was to come after in the full blaze 
of renaissance which marked the latter days of Elizabeth. Of 
the masters who belong to this later era, who have made this 
reign an epoch iu the development of English literature, no name 



LITERARY ACHIEVEMENTS OF REIGN" 617 

is SO universally known and honored without question, as that of 
William Shakspere. But close behind him there rise a score of 
others: Spenser, famous for his Faerie Queen; Raleigh, poet and 
writer of elegant prose; Marlowe, the dramatist whose marvelous 
lines entranced those who listened; Ben Jonson, scholar and wit; 
Bacon, associated with the earlier triumphs of inductive science; 
Sir Philip Sidney, the poet of feeling and skill ; Beaumont and 
Fletcher, famous yoke-fellows in play -writing ; Greene also, and 
Peele, Webster, Ford, and a host of others only a little less 
worthy. These are the men who helped to make Elizabeth's 
reign memorable, and to perpetuate the glory of England and her 
queen. 

The century had been filled with fathomless turmoil and cease- 
less strife. The foundations of the deep had been broken up, and 
the disturbed waters in wild tumult had surged and 
End nf the rcsurged iu their efforts again to secure equilibrium. 

f<t)'ife of the o J. 

iGtii century. The closing years of Elizabeth's reign marked the period 
when that equilibrium was once more temporarily re- 
stored. The struggle of Germany with Charles V. had ended in 
1555 in the Peace of Augsburg; a treacherous peace with its legal 
recognition of the Protestant states and "its wretched rule of mock 
toleration." Philip and the League had failed to prevent the 
accession of Henry of Navarre in France; and although Henry had 
sealed his success by embracing the faith which he had been all his 
life fighting, he did not forget his old allies and friends, and 
in 1598, by the Edict of Nantes, secured toleration to the 
French Protestants. The same year the long struggle of France 
and Spain ended in the Peace of Vervins. Philip II. died within 
the year, and his son Philip III., who had none of his father's 
taste for war and intrigue, whose character was the best pledge for 
the continuance of the peace, succeeded him. With Philip II. 
gone and France at peace with Spain, the English had little excuse 
for carrying on the war farther; all active interest in the original 
issues of the war had long since been lost in the new objects which 
were already drawing the energies of Englishmen into other chan- 
nels. Formal peace, however, was not declared until the second 
yearof the new reign. 



PART III— NATIONAL ENGLAND 

THE ERA OE NATIONAL AWAKENING 
BOOK III— POLITICAL REVOLUTION 

FROM 1603 TO 1689 



CHAPTER I 



THE BREACH BETWEEN KING AND COMMONS 

JAMES I.,ie<K-IG'25 
CHARLES 1., 16-25-1828 

The long struggle between the king and the Commons, which 

virtually began with the first parliament of James L, was the 

result of an inevitable clashing of the two S3'stems which 

f:triuwie'nf had become embodied in English laws by the close of 

withtho " the Tudor Period: the older parliamentarv system of 

parUamoit. .-, r j. • i • i ii T £ 

the Lancastrian kings, and the newer system ot gov- 
ernment by council, inaugurated by the Tudors.^ The first had 
been sanctioned by a body of formal statutes, which had slowly 
accumulated during the two centuries that followed the grant- 
ing of the Great Charter. These statutes, however, had been 
allowed to lose their force in the reaction which followed the civil 
wars of the fifteenth century. The Tudor sovereigns had not 
repealed them; they had simply not used them; and at the open- 
ing of the seventeenth century, although the statutes still survived, 
they served to furnish a theory, rather than a fact, of government. 
The Tudor system of government by council had been allowed to 
grow up during the sixteenth century, when the baronage were 
weak and the Commons had not yet learned their strength, when 

' For a review of the constitutional questions involved in the great 
struggle of the seventeenth century see Prothero's Select Statutes, etc.. 
Introduction. 

618 



THE INEVITABLE CONFLICT 619 

England was confronted by powerful foreign foes and the nation 
was more anxious to preserve its strength in unity and harmony, 
than to secure its liberties by emphasizing the rights of the indi- 
vidual under the laws. The Tudors, moreover, never worried 
themselves over the theories under which they exercised their 
authority, but were quite content with a growing body of prec- 
edents, which, so long as they remained unchallenged, justified 
almost any extension of the royal prerogative. 

It was impossible, however, for two systems so opposite in kind 

to continue to exist side by side without coming into conflict 

sooner or later. Even during Elizabeth's reign, after 

The conflict the destruction of the Armada had revealed to the 

inevitable. 

nation its strength, rumblings of the coming storm are 
to be heard in the protests and petitions of her later parliaments. 
It was not, however, until the Stuarts, by their novel theories of 
"royal prerogative" and "divine right," attempted to justify the 
system which they had received from the Tudors, that the nation, 
acting through its parliaments, roused itself to compel the crown 
to conform its acts to the statutes of the realm, which had been 
long since established, but since the close of the Wars of the Eoses 
had been practically laid aside. The parliament asked for no 
rights which had not been granted to the nation in the ancient 
laws and customs of the land. The king proposed to exercise no 
prerogatives which were not recognized in the precedents of the 
past. Had the first two Stuarts been wise sovereigns of the type 
of Edward I. or Elizabeth, they would have conceded the theory 
and might have saved the fact; but unfortunately for them- 
selves, fortunately for the nation, they were not wise, and 
attempted to meet the venerable theories of the English Constitu- 
tion, which had long since assigned to the king a very definite place 
in the English system, with new and monstrous theories of royal 
supremacy, borrowed in part from the Roman Civil Law, and in 
part from current theological ideas of a party in the English 
Church. The sixteenth century could furnish a precedent for 
almost any abuse of royal authority, for almost any outrage of tlie 
rights of subjects; but English kings had made too many conces- 
sions to powerful refractory parliaments, they had been too often 



620 KING AND COMMONS [james i. 

deposed and tlieir ministers slaughtered, to afford any standing 
ground for a theory of "divine right" or of authority above the 
laws of the realm. 

The successor of Elizabeth with his crown became heir also to 
the arbitrary system of the Tudors and the numberless abuses 

which had crept in as a resnlt of tlieir long impunity in 
'sust^n^^ violating the letter and the spirit of the laws. As the 

government was ordered, its chief instrument was not 
the parliament bat the king's council, or Privy Council, by whose 
counsel and advice the king issued proclamations which had the 
effect of laws. This council at the accession of James consisted 
of about eighteen members^ and included the chief officers of 
state : the Lord High Chancellor, who was the liead of the legal 
system of the kingdom, President of the Court of Chancery and 
Chairman of the House of Lords; the Lord High Admiral, who 
was commander-in-chief of the navy; the Attorney General and 
the Solicitor General, who were the law officers of the crown, who 
advised the king on legal questions and managed the law cases in 
which the crown was involved. Following these were the several 
secretaries of state, who had risen to great prominence under 
Elizabeth, who attended to most of tlie details of administration 
and conducted foreign affairs. 

Another peculiar feature of the Tudor system was the existence 
of a group of irregular courts, vested in each case with special 

Jurisdiction and to that extent invading and setting 
courE^'^'^^ aside the older common law and equity courts of the 

realm. Some of these courts were very ancient, ante- 
dating the Tudor period, and like the common law and equity 
courts had sprung from the original judicial powers of the king's 
council. It was in keeping, however, with the despotic tendency 
of the Tudor reign to increase and greatly extend the powers and 
jurisdictions of these courts, until at the oj)ening of the Stuart 
period fully one-third of the population of England had been 
removed from the jurisdiction of the common law courts. These 
irregular courts had been authorized by acts of parliament and 
were as legal as the more ancient courts of law and equity; but 

' Prothero, p. xcix. 



THE COURTS 621 

they had been left more latitude in methods of procedure and had 
developed customs, which were, if not tyrannical, certainly contrary 
to the spirit of English law, and often invaded rights which were 
commonly supposed to be secured to all Englishmen by Magna 
Charta and other subsequent ordinances and statutes. Thus it 
was their custom to try cases without a jury and compel the pris- 
oner to testify against himself; nor did they hesitate to use torture 
to open the lips of a reluctant witness. . 

The most important of these Tudor courts were the famous 
Court of Star Chamber, the various councils by which the north 

and west were governed, and the Court of High Com- 
Tudor courts mission. The courts of common law and equity were 
law courts. the old and familiar Court of Exchequer, the Court of 

Common Pleas, the Court of King's Bench, and the 

Court of Chancery; the first three had received their final form as 

early as the time of Edward I. ; the fourth as early as Edward III. 

When the special courts were first created, they were perhaps 

justified by the conditions which called them forth. As time 

passed, however, they were for the most part* no longer 
the special necessary, and became more arbitrary and cruel. Men 

cowvts 

charged with petty offenses were dragged before the 
Court of Star Chamber, fined enormous sums and imprisoned for 
years, or they might be punished by having the ears cut off or tho 
nose slit, or in other humiliating ways. The Court of High Com- 
mission also was not behind in inflicting penalties as severe, 
though not as barbarous, for such crimes as staying away from 
church or holding a prayer meeting in a private house. 

In addition to the abuses which had sprung of the extra legal 
powers which parliament had conferred upon the Tudors, there 

were others also, some of which were survivals of older 
other Tudor feudal customs, and some had grown up out of prec- 

abiises. ' . 

edents which the Tudors had established, which had 
passed heretofore unquestioned. To the former belonged the right 

' As late as the administration of Wentworth in the reign of 
Charles I., the Council of the North continued to perform a real service in 
dealing with the lawlessness of powerful subjects, where the authority of 
the ordinary courts broke down entirely. 



622 KI]S"G AND COMMONS - [james i. 

of purveyance by which the oflBcers of the crown could demand the 

goods of subjects, or their services, at the crown's price. In this 

connection is also to be mentioned the right of granting monopolies 

and patents, which had become so great an evil in the later days 

of Elizabeth. The Tudors had also, whenever it 

ReUgiowi pleased them, continued to exact forced loans and 
grievances. -i ' 

benevolences. Other sources of grievance against the 
crown had g^'isen from the determination of the government to 
compel all the people to conform to the legal model prescribed in 
the authorized church. 

These were some of the points upon which it was impossible for 
the crown and the nation to remain long in harmony, if the new 

monarch insisted on going on in the old way. The dis- 

Thepohit pnte, however, over this grievance or that, must not 
at issue. r 1 ■> o ■> 

obscure the real point at issue. It was not merely a 
struggle over particular abuses, but over the whole system of arbi- 
trary government which had been built up by the Tudors, of which 
the abuses were the fruit. The question of ultimate sovereignty 
was really at stake. Did the king enjoy certain prerogative rights, 
bestowed upon him by divine law, which made him supreme in any 
conflict with the laws and customs of parliament or the liberties of 
the nation? Or was the king simply a minister of the state, created 
by the state, empowered to act in the name of the state, and 
himself responsible to the laws of the state, as these laws had been 
defined and authorized by himself in conjunction with the national 
parliament? 

The questions, moreover, which confronted James were not all 
born of English politics or the strifes of English sectaries. He was 
also king of Scotland, and king of Ireland, and each 
— !'w ?s> country had its government separate from that of Eng- 
land although it recognized a common king. Each coun- 
try, moreover, had not only its own problems to settle, it had 
also another very distinct series of questions which had arisen out 
of its relations to England ; problems all of them fully as impor- 
tant and puzzling as those which confronted the king in his English 
domain. There were grave continental questions as well, which 
were also pressing for immediate settlement, questions which had 



CHARACTER OF JAMES I. 623 

grown up out of the struggle of Holland and Spain, and again of 
Spain and France, in all of which England had been more or less 
involved in spite of the conservative policy of Elizabeth. 

It was a time, therefore, when England more than ever needed a 
king who should be resourceful, sagacious, and broad enough in his 

sympathies to touch all the manifold interests which 
ciinracter of |-|-^g English crown had come to represent at the opening 

of the seventeenth century. But unfortunately James 
I. possessed no one of these needed qualifications. He was thirty- 
seven at the death of Elizabeth and had been a king since infancy; 
but he belonged to that class of minds who never learn anything 
and never forget anything; hence his experience in Scotland had 
profited him little. He had been well educated and knew more of 
the history of his own country and of neighboring peoples than 
most of the statesmen of his time. But his learning had brought 
him little wisdom and left him only a conceited pedant, absurdly 
vain of his accomplishments, with unlimited confidence in his own 
powers, and ready to be victimized by the first designing courtier 
who loudly sounded his praises as "the British Solomon." His 
contemporary Henry IV. of France called him the "wisest fool" 
in Europe. He v/as, moreover, incapable of "taking trouble in 
thought or action," and hence was irresolute, susjaicious, depend- 
ent, and "an easy prey to the passing feelings of the hour. " He 
had none of the Tudor trait of securing personal respect; he was 
tactless in managing those who opposed him; but tolerated 
familiarity in men who posed as his confidential friends, who 
fawned upon him and secretly despised him. 

Yet there was some good in this pedant king; he was affable, 
moral, and actuated by the best of motives. In some things he 

was even in advance of his times; he hated war and was 
■understaiid "intellectually tolerant, anxious to be at peace with 

those whose opinions differed from his own. He was 
above all things anxious to be a reconciler, to make peace where 
there had been war before, and to draw those to live in harmony 
who had hitherto glared at one another in mutual defiance. He 
was penetrated with a strong sense of the evil of fanaticism."^ 

1 Gardiner, History of England, 1603-1642, I, pp. 48, 49. 



624 KIKG AND COMMONS [jamesI. 

He wished particularly to treat the Catholics with lenity. He 
saw also that the peace of the island depended upon the complete 
union of England and Scotland, and sought this union as a definite 
policy. But unfortunately, like many a wiser man of his day, he 
failed utterly to understand the Puritans. A bitter experience in 
Scotland had taught him to hate its officious Presbyterianism, and 
to long for the land where the ecclesiastical lords were the servants 
of the crown, not its masters. Hence when he entered England 
he proposed to do what he could to strengthen the hands of the 
bishops, and would make no concessions to the party who were cry- 
ing out against the corruptions of the established clergy. He saw 
in the cry for ecclesiastical reform, only an attack u|)on the crown 
itself; as he was fond of saying, "No bishop, no king." He 
thought he knew the English character and plumed himself on his 
ability to give the Englishmen just what they wanted. Yet 
almost his first act on entering the country was to hang an ordi- 
nary pickpocket without trial. Later he assured his dismayed 
parliament: "The state of monarchy is the supremest thing upon 
earth ; for kings are not only God's lieutenants upon earth and 
sit upon God's throne, but even by God himself they are called 
gods. ... as to dispute what God may do is blasphemy, so it is 
seditious in subjects to dispute what a iving may do in the height 
of his power. "^ 

When James reached London he found the court divided into 

two parties, as they favored continuing the long war with Spain or 

bringing it to a close. The natural instinct of James 

The court 

partiei^of was for peace and this threw him at once under the 
influence of the powerful little man, who for nine years 
remained his chief minister of state, Robert Cecil, son of the late 
Lord Burghley. The leader of the war party was Sir 
TFaZter Walter Raleigh who had been captain of the late queen's 

guard. His qualities were of the showy kind, that 
figured best in leading forlorn hopes, or in planning novel expedi- 
tions for colonial settlement. He had never been popular with his 
contemporaries and his pronounced partiality for war as well as his 

^ Prothero, S.S. pp. 293-295; also Lee, Source Book of English History, 
p. 337. 



THE COBHAM PLOT 625 

reputation for intrigue had kept him out of Elizabeth's Privy 
Council. In marked contrast with this showy man of the camp 

and the sword, was the quiet little man of the cabinet 
CeciT^ and the pen; a tireless worker who could turn olf 

enough work for a dozen ordinary men and who soon 
made himself indispensable to the new sovereign. The king never 
loved the little minister, but he liked his conciliatory, tactful 
ways, so dear to sovereign hearts of the kind that James possessed, 
and he needed him. So Cecil was retained and Ealeigh dismissed. 
The king and his minister at once set about making peace with 
Spain, and a defensive treaty with France. This policy was bitterly 

opposed by Ealeigh and his friends, and tbey so far for- 
The Cobham, got themselves as to discuss a plan for getting rid of 

or main rob 

plot, 1603. Cecil by force. Lord Cobham, a friend of Raleigh, also 
entertained the idea of placing Arabella Stuart ^ on the 
throne. There was some wild talk, in addition, of getting help 
from Spain. 

While Cobham and Ealeigh were thus casting about in their 
minds for the best way to get rid of Cecil, some of the Catholic 
priests and their sympathizers, who were greatly incensed 
w/ot'^^*' at James because he had not lived up to certain prom- 

ises of toleration which it was alleged '^ he had made 
while in Scotland, were also talking over a scheme, equally wild and 
imj)racticable, of seizing James and frightening him by threats of 
personal violence into keeping his promise. This plot is known as 
the lye plot in distinction from the plot of Raleigh and Cobham 
which was designated as the main plot. The two plots had no 
connection, save as George Brooke, a brother of Lord Cobham, was 
connected with both. But it pleased Cecil to arrest all concerned 
and try them as though the plots were one. The evidence was 
slight, and yet in the prevailing fear of revolution which had 
become almost a mania, the people were hardly in a mood to dis- 
tinguish between a desire to get rid of a popular minister and 

1 See table p. 587. 

^ James had declared that he would not exact the recusancy fines, 
which to him was too much like making nierohandise of conscience. See 
Gardiner, I, pp. 99, 100. 



626 KINO AND COMMONS [jamesi. 

treason against the crown itself, and Cecil had no trouble in secur- 
ing the conviction of Cobham, Brooke, Ealeigh, and others. Brooke 
and Watson, a Catholic priest, were hanged; but Cobham, Ealeigh, 
and Lord Grey de Wilton, a Puritan, were respited and sent to the 
Tower. 

In the meantime James had been brought face to face with the 
religious problem in a still more annoying form in the shape of the 

" Millenary Petition," ^ so called because purporting to 
ton Court havc the support of "more than a thousand" clergymen 
January, ' of the established church. The tone of the document 

was moderate enough. It represented those who desired 
"not a disorderly innovation, but a due and godly reformation," 
and among other things petitioned that men appointed as clergy- 
men might be better qualified to preach, or that those already in 
office might be compelled to set apart a portion of their living to 
maintain men who could preach ; that the number of livings held 
by individuals might be restricted; that the prayer book be relieved 
of certain terms which belonged to the older Catholic service; that 
church songs and music be moderated to better edification ; that 
the Lord's Day be not profaned; that the "longsomeness" of the 
service be abridged; and that kneeling at communion, or bowing 
at the name of Jesus, or the giving of the ring in marriage be not 
required. Moderate as was the tone of the document, it had 
emanated from the Puritan wing of the church, and the conservative 
elements at once took alarm, the two universities leading in the 
tirade against those who publicly found "fault with the doctrine 
or discipline of the Church of England." James undoubtedly 
meant to give the petitioners a fair hearing; the demand that 
clergymen should be able to preach rather appealed to his shrewd 
sense; and he appointed the 14th of January for a conference at 
Hampton Court, in order to hear arguments of the contending 
parties for and against the petition. For a whole day he listened 
to the discussion patiently, but at the second meeting an unfortu- 
nate mention of "presbyters" by one of the disputants, roused the 
king and he plunged into the debate. "Presbytery," he shouted, 
"agreetli as well with monarchy as God with the devil;" he 

^ Gee and Hardy, pp. 508-512; also Gardiner, I, pp. 148-158. 



1605] THE GUKPOWDER PLOT 62? 

would make the Puritans conform, or "harry them out of the 
land, or else do worse." The conference from which so much was 
expected, broke up in confusion. It had ended in the total defeat 
of the Puritans; nor was the wrath of the king to j)ass with a 
harmless outburst of hot words. Early in 1605 he compelled the 
Puritan clergy to vacate their pulpits. Peace within the church 
was henceforth impossible. 

The king's treatment of the Catholics was as reckless as his 
treatment of the Puritans, James respected the old church as the 
mother of the Anglican Church, and he desired that 
iheCaUwUcs *^® Catholics should be tolerated. He honestly wished 
nnwd&rPiot ^^ I'smit the payment of the "recusancy fines" and in 
November 4, general to mitigate the action of the severer Tudor 
laws.^ Yet the Catholics were far from satisfied; they 
wished James to restore to them all the rights of citizenship, a thing 
which he conld not do without the consent of parliament, and, 
when in 1604 parliament compelled him to allow the "penal laws" 
against Catholics to be executed, a few hotheads determined 
upon a plan which only the wildest desperation could justify even 
to themselves. They proposed to blow up the House of Lords at 
the moment when, at the opening of parliament, the king should go 
there with his council to meet the Commons. Then having swept 
away the entire Protestant government. King, Lords, and Commons, 
they would raise the country and put one of James's children on 
the throne. The leader was Robert Catesby, a man of good family, 
of great energy and courage, with whom were associated Tliomas 
Percy of the old Northumberland family, Thomas Winter and 
others; not least among them was Guy Fawkes, a Yorkshire soldier 
of fortune, who had fought for Spain against the Netherlanders. 
The plotters got control of the cellars under the House of Lords 
and here stored a quantity of gunpowder. But happily the date 
for the assembling of parliament was put off, and, in need of funds, 
the conspirators were tempted to enlarge the number of those who 
were in the plot. One of these new members of the conspiracy. 
Sir Francis Tresham, in his desire to save his brother-in-law, Lord 
Monteagie, let out the dangerous secret. The day for the meeting 

iProthero, S. S., pp. 17, 75, 76, 88, 89-93. 



G28 KING AND COMMONS [james I. 

of parliament had been finally fixed for the 5th of November, but 
on the night of the 4th the ministry had the cellars searched and 
found Fawkes in charge of the powder barrels. The other con- 
spirators were already assembled at D unchurch in Warwickshire to 
carry out their part of the plan, when they heard that Fawkes had 
been discovered. They fled to Holbeche House in Worcestershire 
and here made a brave fight for their lives. Catesby, Percy, and 
two others, were slain. The rest, most of them wounded, were 
taken to London, and there, with Fawkes, put to death with all 
the barbarity which the times permitted. 

The results of the plot were disastrous to the Catholics. The 

exasperated country was not inclined to make much distinction 

between the few enthusiasts who had engaged in the 

pim^der Plot desperate enterprise and the great body of their co-reli- 

wmi'f" ' gionists. The country was thoroughly alarmed, and 

Catholics. . , , i a • t t j. • 

in response to the cry for severer measures in addition 
to the old laws, which had been burdensome enough under Eliza- 
beth, parliament enacted that no Catholic should practice law or 
medicine or hold any office in the government, whether civil, 
military or naval ; no Catholic could inherit real estate ; live in 
London, unless engaged in trade ; go more than five miles from 
his home, or appear at court. His house also was to be always 
open for inspection. All Catholic books were to be destroyed. It 
was a criminal offense to send a child to a Catholic school in Eng- 
land or abroad; while the attempt to convert a Protestant to 
Catholicism was to be punished by hanging. 

It took James even less time to embroil himself with his parlia- 
ment than with the religionists of his realm. His first parliament 

was summoned in March 1604. In his directions to the 
Goodwin's electors he had warned them against sending to paiiia- 

jiient any outlaws, or bankrupts, or men noted for 
superstitious blindness or turbulent manners. This was whole- 
some advice but the returns were to be sent to the Court of 
Chancery for review, and if any were not satisfactory they were 
"to be rejected as unlawful and insufficient." Here was a very 
important principle involved, which if unchallenged would prac- 

iProthero, S. S., pp. 325-331 and 280-293. 



1604] GOODWIN'S CASE 629 

tically leave in the king's bands the right of settling contested 
elections, and at a crisis enable him to determine altogether the 
complexion of the Commons. Fortunately a test case presented 
itself at once, in one Francis Goodwin, who- bad been sent up from 
Buckinghamshire. Goodwin was an outlaw, that is, be bad an 
unsatisfied judgment of a court banging over him, and was at once 
disqualified by the Court of Chancery. A new election was ordered 
and Sir John Fortescue was returned. But when parliament met, 
Goodwin claimed bis seat, and the Commons raised the point of 
privilege and sustained him. James denied their point on the 
ground that all privilege bad its source in the king's grant. The 
Commons, however, carried the day; both sides withdrew their 
candidates, but the king recognized the right of the Commons to 
decide contested elections. 

No sooner had Goodwin's case been closed than the House 
found another of its privileges violated. One of its members named 

Sherley bad been arrested for debt, ^ though according to 
m/e"^^*^'* parliamentary privilege, no member could be arrested 

during the session of parliament except for treason, 
felony, or breach of the peace. Another quarrel followed which 
ended finally in the release of Sherley and a new recognition of the 
principle of freedom from arrest. 

Another matter which James bad upon his heart, was the 
organic union of the two kingdoms. The object was wise and 

statesmanlike, but the English and Scots had not yet 
i^I^^.^!!''^ forgotten the bitter past; the old hatreds still smoul- 

dered, and neither people regarded a closer union with 
any favor. Yet farseeing statesmen like Sir Francis Bacon saw 
that the Union of the two countries was not only desirable but 
inevitable, and used their influence to persuade the two parlia- 
ments to appoint committees to consider the matter. The com- 
mittees met and agreed to recommend a commercial union, by 
which the tariff wall existing between the two countries should be 
thrown down, and free trade established except in the matter of 
Englisb wool and Scotch cattle. The hostile border laws were also 
to be abolished, and ncitlier country was to afford asylum to the 

1 Prothero, S. S. , pp. 289, 390 and 320-325. 



G30 KING AND COMMONS [jamesI. 

criminals of the other. They also recommended that Scotsmen 
born before the accession of James, the ante-nati, should be nat- 
uralized in England by an act of parliament, and that Scotsmen 
who were born after the accession of James, the post-nati, should 
be declared naturalized from birth. This report, which was cer- 
tainly moderate, and, if adopted, would have made a good begin- 
ning, was returned to parliament in 1606. But James who was 
impatient to have a legislative union established, managed to 
prejudice his case by his tactless impatience ; he delivered long, tire- 
some speeches in broad Scotch, urging the bewildered parliament 
to act, and making no effort to conceal his contempt for the argu- 
ments of the opposition. The parliament was not to be lectured 
into compliance. There were grave questions of royal prerogative 
involved. English merchants, also, were afraid to face the free 
rivalry of Scottish thrift; and English politicians had no wish to 
share fat offices of state with James's countrymen. Parliament, 
therefore, went no farther than to abolish the old border laws which 
had grown up in a time when the two nations were at constant 
feud. In 1G08 in the test case of Eobert Colville, who had been' 
born in Edinburgh in 1605, the English judges, by declaring 
him to be a natural subject of the king of England, admitted 
all post-nati to naturalization. Here the matter rested until 
the Act of Union of 1707 permanently united the two people in 
one state. 

During the thirty odd years in which James had been reigning 
in Scotland, he had been forced to accommodate himself to the 

meagre revenues of a country which was proverbially 
(iftiieuciv poor. He was not, however, thrifty by nature, and 

when he found himself called at last to reign over a 
country which had the reputation of being rich, like a poor trades- 
man who suddenly finds himself a millionaire, he began to spend 
money as though he expected never to see the bottom of the new 
treasure chest. He expended £100,000 upon his journey from 
Scotland, the funeral of Elizabeth, and his coronation. In his 
second year he squandered £426,000 and incurred debts to the 
amount of £735,000. The annual income of Elizabeth had 
amounted to about £300,000, and with the utmost frugality had 



1606-1610] THE GREAT CONTRACT 631 

barely sufficed for her needs.* The prodigality of James, therefore, 
soon forced him to apply to parliament for help. But parliament 
was in no mood to look leniently upon such "needless and 
unreasonable" extravagance, and, instead of money, gave the king a 
lecture. Cecil, now earl of Salisbury, proposed to help the king 
by increasing the tax on certain imports and exports, imimsitions, 
basing his action upon the right of the king to regulate foreign 
commerce. His position was contested by a London merchant 
na ed John Bate,^ but was sustained by the Court of Exchequer; 
the judges ruling that the king by royal prerogative might regu- 
late foreign commerce. Upon this ruling, in 1608, Salisbury, who 
had recently added to the duties of secretary those of lord treas- 
urer as well, issued a new book of rates, which covered almost all 
articles of export or import and was intended to increase the royal 
revenues by about £70,000 a year. The precedent was too danger- 
ous to allow to lie long unquestioned, and the impositions were very 
soon given a conspicuous place in the list of grievances which the 
Stuart parliaments were drawing out against the administration. 
In 1610 Salisbury brought forth another measure known as the 
Great Contract.,^ by which he proposed, in return for the payment 

of a lump sum to be applied to the crown debts, and a 
The Great 

Contract, regular yearly income of £300,000, assured by a per- 
manent tax, to surrender the old feudal dues and the 
irregular profits of purveyance; the king also agreed to consent to 
a bill against impositions. There was m.uch to be said in favor of 
this plan which promised so many mutual advantages both to king 
and people, and the Commons actually agreed to the general prin- 

1 This revenue was derived from the crown estates, the ecclesiastical 
first fruits and tenths which the crown had enjoyed since Henrj^ VIII. 's 
time, various feudal incidents, and tunnage and poundage which it was 
the custom to grant to each sovereign for life upon his accession. These 
constituted the ordinary revenues of the crown and were sufficient to 
meet its ordinary needs. When there were special needs, such as might 
arise from war, a special parliamentary grant was necessary. Since the 
fourteenth century it was customary to raise such extra funds by a gen- 
eral tax on the yearly value of land and on personal property, the subsidy. 
See Prothero, S.S. Introduction pp. Ixix-lxxxiv. 

2Prothero, S. S., pp. 340, 343. 

3 Prothero, S. S , pp. 295, 296. 



632 KING AND COMMONS - [jamesI. 

ciple of the Contract, but, unfortunately, Cecil, in order to prepare 
the way for his contract, had invited the Commons to present their 
grievances; they had taken him at his word, and in the alterca- 
tions which followed, the Great Contract was lost sight of in the 
larger questions of law and right. James became satisfied that 
nothing more could be done with his first parliament, winch had 
been in existence now since 1604, and on February 11, 1611, sent 
them to their homes, with much ill-feeling on both sides. 

Fortunately the growing distrust of king and parliament, which 
had thus far marked the first years of James's reign, had not inter- 
fered with a great work which since 1604 had been 
thorized Quietly Carried on by a committee of learned divines, who 

the Scrip- represented both parties in the English Church. This 
work was the famous "King James Version of the 
Scriptures," which was completed and published in 1611, and, in 
spite of an early unpopularity and of many attempts since to secure 
greater accuracy of statement or more scholarly representation of 
Scriptural thought, still holds its sway among English-speaking 
peoples as the most popular version of the Bible. 

Not less perplexing than the questions which confronted James 
at home were the questions which greAV up out of the English hold 
upon Ireland. When Essex returned from Ireland in 
1599 he had left the island in an uproar. His suc- 
cessor Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy, found Dublin and a few 
miles of the surrounding country virtually all that remained in 
the hands of the English. He was, however, a practical, thought- 
ful man, with the instincts of a soldier, and within three years 
had ended the revolt and regained possession of the island. A 
famine, which had followed the war with frightful ravages, com- 
pleted the soldier's work. The energetic deputy covered the 
country with fortresses, small, but well garrisoned and provisioned, 
and so overawed the Irish nobles, that the earl of Tyrone submitted, 
and the earl of Desmond fled to Spain. 

Mountjoy was followed by Sir Arthur Chichester who made an 
able and determined effort to restore the conquered counties by 
introducing the English system of government in the place of the 
old tribal system. The tribal chieftains became simple landlords, 



1607-1611] THE PLANTATION" OF ULSTER 633 

and their subjects tenants, who instead of the old irreguLar levies 
were henceforth to be liable to their lords only for fixed dues or 

services. Chichester also attempted to convert the 
f 'iretoiS country to the Protestant faith, which was already 

the religion by law, but which had never extended 
farther than the bishops appointed by the government, — a set 
of men for the most part notoriously -unfit for their posts. 
The deputy had the Bible and Prayer Book translated into 
Irish and attempted to reform the church. But the dispossessed 
Irish priests refused to leave their charges, while the English of 
the Pale clung to the old faith quite as stubbornly as the Irish ; 
"and the sole result of the deputy's efforts was to build up a new 
Irish people out of the English and Irish upon the common basis 
of religion." Other troubles were also brewing. The Irish 
chieftains did not take kindly to the loss of their tribal jurisdic- 
tions and their right of levy upon their clansmen; they objected 
also to the interference of the new law officers in their quarrels, 
and began to prepare for war. The English hold upon the coun- 
try, however, was too strong to be shaken off, and in 1607 Tyrone 
abandoned the struggle and retired to the continent. 

If Chichester could have had his way something might now 
have been done for Ireland, for 'the people as a whole were not 

altogether averse to the new order, and were beginning 
Tlie "Planta- ' o o 

tion of ^^ to understand the advantage of quiet and of the protec- 

tion of the civil courts against the tyranny of their old 
lords. But, unfortunately for both England and Ireland, James 
and his council now determined to interfere and deliberately 
adopted a gigantic plan of spoliation. They declared two-thirds 
of the north of Ireland confiscated to the crown and proceeded to 
allot the lands to Scotch and English colonists. This colonization 
of north Ireland, known as the "Plantation of Ulster," was car- 
ried on with the usual indifference of a conquering people to the 
rights of a subject nation. The choicest lands were taken for the 
settlers, and the Irish were forced to content themselves with what 
was left. The new settlers, of the fervid Scotch Presbyterian type 
mostly, were energetic and thrifty people, and soon gave a good 
account of themselves in their growing wealth and prosperity. 



634 - KING AND COMMONS [james I. 

But nothing of this prosperity was for the dispossessed Irish. 
Eeduced to enforced poverty by being despoiled of their lands, 
hated and distrusted by the conquerors as "alien" and Catholic, 
and despised as "barbarians," they lost all faith in English jus- 
tice and handed down to the generations to come, hatred of tlie 
English and defiance of the hand that had despoiled them, as a 
sacred duty, to be observed with a devotion kindred to that with 
which they cherished the religion of their fathers. 

The years which immediately followed the dissolution of 

James's first parliament, were full of important incident. In 1612 

Salisbury died and James, like Henry III., undertook 

James and ^q ]^q ]^[q qwu chief minister. Like Henry III also he 
the favorites. ^ 

soon fell into the hands of unworthy favorites, much to 
the disgust and scandal of the realm. The first of these was a 
handsome Scotchman named Robert Carr, whom James made first 
viscount of Rochester and then earl of Somerset. Carr knew 
little of business ; yet James gave him his complete confidence, 
the effect of which was soon seen in the renewed confusion into 
which the finances of the administration fell within a year after 
Salisbury's death. In 1614 Carr's influence began to wane before 
that of a new rival for the king's favor, George Villiers; and in 
1616 his career at court was cut short in consequence of the crime 
of his wife, who had succeeded in poisoning her enemy Sir Thomas 
Overbury. 

James, also, had ideas of his own about the jiroper foreign policy 
for England. "He wished to put an end to religious warfare and 
to persuade the Catholic powers and the Protestant 
pniicij of powers of the continent that it was for their real inter- 
est to abstain from mutual aggression. Why should 
not he and his family be the centre round which this new league 
of peace should form itself?" ^ The thought was noble and worthy 
of James's peace-loving principles, but entirely visionary and 
impracticable as all but James knew. The years 1609-1613 saw 
various marriage projects advanced in which the children of 
James of marriageable age were concerned and for whom at 
different times alliances were proposed with the Catholic courts of 

1 Gardiner, II, p. 138, 



1611-1624] GEORGE VILLIERS 635 

Spain, France, and Tuscany. In these negotiations James seems 
to have been the only party seriously in earnest. He was, more- 
over, vigorously opposed both by Salisbury and his own eldest son 
Prince Henry, especially in the plan of an alliance with Spain, and 
largely by their influence in 1611 he was persuaded to consent to 
a union of his daughter Elizabeth with Frederick V., Count 
Palatine of the Ehine, head of the league of German princes known 
as the Protestant Union. The marriage was celebrated two years 
later when both Cecil and Prince Henry were in their graves. 
The early death of this fine young prince seems to have been an 
irreparable loss to England. He was a thorough Protestant in his 
sympathies and of unusually sound sense for a Stuart. Although 
he had not yet reached his twentieth year he had given the friends 
of his country great reason to expect much from him. He saw what 
James did not see, that England's future lay in encouraging rather 
than repressing her Protestant tendencies; he saw also that 
Protestant Germany was the natural ally of England, and had 
accordingly greatly favored the marriage project of his sister 
Elizabeth. He appreciated also the value of such men as Ealeigh, 
and had said of his father's treatment of the old soldier of Eliza- 
beth: "My father is the only sovereign of Europe, who would keep 
such a bird in a cage." His loss was deeply felt. 

After the death of Prince Henry and Cecil, James veered back 
again to his earlier idea of a Catholic alliance as the best means of 
Georae securing a general peace. In this he was urged on by 

o/Buckin^-^^ George Villiers, who had succeeded Carr as the king's evil 
ham. genius. Villiers was advanced rapidly; in 1616 he was 

created a viscount, in 1617 an earl, in 1618 a marquis, and finally 
in 1623 duke of Buckingham. He had great personal magnetism; 
was gallant, kind hearted, impulsive, and not averse to hard work. 
He was, moreover, a very different man from the type of Gaveston 
or Carr. He dreamed of great things, but lacked the practical 
judgment necessary to turn them into realities. He was respon- 
sible for most of the later blunders of James. 

In the meanwhile the personal administration of the king had 
brought matters to such a pass that he could no longer put off 
calling a parliament, and in 1614 issued writs for the election. 



63G KIIS^G AND COMMONS [jAMBsi, 

When the new parliament came together, although it was alleged 
that some of the fiieuds of the king had "undertaken" to secure 

returns favorable to his designs, it was found that the 
th^A^idied sp^i'it of the members was just as intractable as ever, 
Pariiammt, .^^id before they would pass an act to help the king out 
tak&rs'" ^^ ^^^^ difficulties, they insisted that he should listen to 

their grievances. They were furious over the alleged 
attempt of the "undertakers" to influence the elections; they 
protested against the impositions; they protested against the ejec- 
tion of the Puritan clergy; they protested against the favorites, 
and in general against most everything the king had done or had 
failed to do, since he began his reign. James, however, soon 
grew weary and sore under the incessant scolding of his "faithful 
and loving Commons" and, fully determined if possible to get 
along without this ungracious monitor in the future, dissolved his 
second parliament before even a single bill had been passed. The 
king's friends dubbed it in derision "The Addled Parliament." 

The parliament was not the only body against whom James was 
compelled to defend the prerogatives which he had received from 

the Tudors. From the first he had shown a disposi- 
pendmceof tion to Sustain the special courts whenever they came 

tl}€' COUVts. 

Dunniamiof into couflict with the common law courts. The com- 
mon law judges on their part felt an instinctive hos- 
tility to the extra legal powers which had descended from the 
Tudors. Their leader was Sir Edward Coke, eminent among the 
jurists of James for his knowledge of the common law. He had 
held the office of attorney general under Elizabeth, had been made 
Chief Justice of Common Pleas by James in 1606 and Chief Jus- 
tice of the King's Bench in 1613, Coke took his stand upon the 
principle that all questions of law between the king and the 
nation, that is questions of prerogative, should be submitted to the 
courts. lie also upheld the supremacy of the common law courts 
over the extra legal courts by declaring the right of the common 
law judges to limit the jurisdiction of these courts in special cases, 
and in supporting this view he had not hesitated to issue an 
injunction against the court of High Commission or to reverse a 
decision even of the court of Chancery. In his defense of the 



1616] SIR EDWAED COKE 637 

dignity of the common law courts the courageous chief justice had 
more than once been brought face to face with the king. In one 
of these altercations James had declared of Coke's position that it 
placed the king under the law, "which is treason to affirm." To 
which Coke had coolly replied by quoting a maxim of Bracton : 
"The king ought, not to be under any man, but under God and the 
law.'''' In 1616 the contention between the king and his chief 
justice reached a crisis in which the king flatly contended that in 
any case in which the prerogative of the crown was concerned it 
was the duty of the judges to stay proceedings until they had first 
consulted the king. Coke saw that the whole question of the 
independence of the courts was at stake and brought all his 
wealth of legal learning and powers of argument to bear. James 
bullied and blustered, but mere volubility of which he was always 
a master, was no match for the learning of the chief justice, and 
failing of other ways to silence his antagonist James dismissed him 
from "the office which he had magnified so highly." By the dis- 
missal of Coke "James obtained at a blow all that he had been 
seeking by more devious courses." The common law judges 
henceforth held their offices practically as well as theoretically at 
the pleasure of the crown; "the prerogative was safe from attacks 
from judges who, comparatively at least with the men who had 
held office before the fall of Coke, were dependent upon the favors 
and the anger of the crown." 

During all these years Sir Walter Raleigh had remained in 
prison where his unfortunate plot against Cecil had brought him 

in 1603. He had amused himself by writing books and 
expedikon devising impossible schemes for bettering the financial 
<4 Raleigh, conditions of the government. At last the report of. 

the existence of a gold mine in South America won the 
ear of the king, and in 1617 Raleigh was fitted out with a ship and 
sent to the Orinoco to find his marvelous mine. He was warned, 
however, not to molest the Spanish or in any way embroil James 
with Spain. The expedition was a pitiful failure. Raleigh's men, 
apparently against his orders, attacked the Spanish town of St. 
Thomas, and refusing to go farther forced him to return empty 
handed. The English applauded the storming of St. Thomas and 



638 KING AND COMMONS [jamesI. 

saw no crime in it; bnt James was bent npon maintaining his 
friendly relations with Spain. It was determined, therefore, to 
sacrifice Ealeigh to the demand of Spain and accordingly soon 
after his return tlie sentence of 1603 was carried ont. The people 
had long since forgotten the former unpopularity of Ealeigh and 
looked upon him "in the tragedy of his death" almost as a 
martyr. James was now the most unpopular man in England. 

The immediate outbreak of the Thirty Years' War, however, 

soon drew the attention of the people to other objects and offered 

James an opportunity of recovering their confidence. 

Outbreak of But lie had learned nothing by his blunders, and obsti- 

the Tiiirtii o -j 

Tears' War nately persisted in his course of antagonizing the nation 
at every step. In 1G18 the Protestant assembly of 
Bohemia had refused to recognize longer as their king Fer- 
dinand, the head of the Austrian Ilapsburgs, and had offered the 
throne to the Protestant Prince Frederick of the Palatine. Fred- 
erick accepted and was crowned Angnst 26, 1619. Two days later 
Ferdinand was elected emperor and at once brought the imperial 
power to bear against his rival. James was anxious to help his 
son-in-law, but it troubled him to reconcile his own position as 
champion of peace and the divine right of kings with the support 
of one whom he feared might be technically a rebel. He hesitated 
and dallied, and in his despair sought the interposition of Spain. 
He was foolish enough to think tliat by securing the marriage of 
Prince Charles with the Infanta of Spain, he might connect him- 
self with the Catholic party in Europe and enlist Spain actively in 
behalf of his daughter's husband. The Spaniards, however, had 
no thought of supporting Frederick, but instead made ready to 
attack the Palatinate on their own account. Yet they were will- 
ing to let James hope, so long as he kept out of the war. 

In 1620 Frederick suffered a serious defeat near Prague; the 

Spaniards also invaded the Palatinate. It was evident that James 

must interfere if his son-in-law were to be saved. Still 

The third 

parliament ho hesitated. His people were furious, and from all 
sides arose the cry for war with Spain. But Bucking- 
ham, who had unbounded confidence in his own powers and was 
still hopeful of bringing about a general reconciliation through an 



1631-1624] IMPEACHMENT OF BACON 639 

English-Spanish marriage, insisted that there be no war; and yet 
it was not repugnant to his plans to make use of the existing war 
fever in order to put England on a war footing; — a threat which 
Spain might well hesitate to challenge. Accordingly James's third 
parliament was brought together in 1621. Ilis attitude was con- 
ciliatory and coaxing; he deprecated "the undertakers" whose 
mistaken zeal in his cause had made so much trouble with his last 
parliament ; he pleaded for time in carrying on the present negotia- 
tions, but declared his intention, if the negotiations failed, of 
beginning war at once in defense of his son's territory and the 
Protestant religion. The Commons promptly voted the war sup- 
plies, and then as there was nothing else to do, they vented their 
impatience in a series of inquiries into the perennial subject of 
domestic grievances. In this they were supported by the vener- 
able ex-justice Coke, who in spite of his years had come back to 
the attack on the king as full of fight as ever, and determined to 
carry on in the parliament the struggle which he had been forced 
to drop in the courts.^ The House fiTst attacked the old abuse of 
monopolies and patents, in which James and his courtiers had been 
driving a thriving trade, and although tliey were not abolished 

until, 1624, the protest was not lost. They then turned 
mentof^ upon Sir Francis Bacon, Coke's old enemy, who was 

attorney general at the time of Coke's dismissal, but 
had since been made chancellor, and impeached him upon 
charges of corruption. Bacon confessed and threw himself upon 
the mercy of the peers. The king remitted the penalty but a 
valuable precedent had been established. The Commons had 
recovered an old and important weapon against crown ministers 
which since the impeachment of Suffolk in 1450, had been left to 
rust along with other forgotten but not outworn constitutional 
forms. It was found to be just as terrible and just as efficient as 
ever, and from tliis time forward, during the whole Stuart period, 
there was scarcely a parliament that did not try to mark some 
minister for impeachment. 

' For service of Coke in the third parliament of James and general 
estimate of his character see Gardiner, IV, 40, 41. 
2Prothero, S. S., p. 334. 



640 KIlsTG AND COMMONS [jambsI. 

In the meanwhile parliament emboldened by its successes 

began to show an alarming disjaosition to help the king in his 

"negotiations." It learned, also, that he had proposed 

Attack of iq i\^Q Spaniards to secure toleration for English Catho- 
Inng upon -i => 

^rT^l^lch ^^^^' ^'^"-^ ^^ show their temper the Commons decreed 
that the recusants should pay a double share towards the 
war fund; they also petitioned the king to put the laws against 
CJatholics in force, and asked him to secure a Protestant bride for 
his son. Encouraged by Buckingham and Gondomar, the Span- 
ish ambassador, James forbade the members to discuss "myster- 
ies of state" and covertly threatened the leaders by announcing 
his right to punish members for their conduct as members of the 
House. This direct attack upon the right of speech again brought 
forward the old lion Coke, and under his leadership the Com- 
mons ordered to be enrolled uj)on their journals the famous opin- 
ion "that the liberties, franchises, privileges, and jurisdictions of 
parliament are the ancient and undoubted birthright and inherit- 
ance of the subjects of England; and that the arduous and urgent 
affairs concerning the king, state, and defence of the realm and of 
the Church of England, and the making and maintenance of laws, 
and redress of grievances, which daily happen within this realm, 
are proper subjects and matter of counsel and debate in parlia- 
ment; and that in the handling and proceeding of these businesses 
every member of the House hath, and of right ought to have, 
freedom of speech, to propound, treat, reason, and bring to con- 
clusion the same. " ^ In connection with these discussions are to be 
noted the names of John Pym, a young member from Bedford- 
shire, and Thomas Wentworth, a member from Yorkshire, names 
soon to be household words in England. James sent for the 
Journal and tore out the protest, and then dismissed parliament. 
He also sent Coke, Phelips, and Mallory to the Tower, and confined 
Pym to his house. 

With the obstinate tenacity of a small mind James continued 
to cling to his Spanish marriage scheme. But matters were 
pressing in the Palatinate. The Protestants had placed their cause 

^ Prothero, Introduction, pp. Ixxxvii-xcviii. and pp. 117 133, 255, 310- 
316 and 320-339. 



1624] CHARLES AND BUCKINGHAM 641 

in the hands of Mansfeld, a reckless soldier of fortune, who was 

not only no match for Count Tilly, "the general of the Catholic 

League, but had alienated the friends of Frederick by 

Last attempt j^jg reckless treatment of the peasantry of the Rhine 
to win Spam. ^ >' 

country. The Protestant Union withdrew from the 
struggle ; Heidelberg and Mannheim fell ; Frederick fled to Holland 
and his electoral honor was given by the Emperor Ferdinand to the 
duke of Bavaria. James in his despair listened to a wild scheme 
of Buckingham's, and sent him with Prince Charles to Madrid to 
push the suit in person. The appearance of the two at the Span- 
ish court compelled the Spaniards to throw off the mask, and even 
Buckingham saw at last how useless it was to expect Spain to 
unite with England against the other branch of the House of 
Austria. Had the attempt been made earlier good might have 
come of it, though not in the way that James had planned. But 
now Spain had carried its purpose; the Palatinate was ruined; 
Frederick had been punished and the Spanish court sought only 
to shake off the English without a quarrel. 

Buckingham and Charles returned angry and disgusted, and 
as determined to make war on Spain as before they had been set 

upon the alliance. The nation which had been furious 
^nd^CTMries' ^heu the object of the prince's expedition became 
inpoiver, known, went wild with joy when he returned without 

his bride. The favorite leaped at once into unbounded 
popularity. James, broken in body, the result of his ungoverned 
habits of eating and drinking, and worn in mind by anxiety and 
vexation, thought no longer of resistance. He left the conduct of 
affairs virtually in the hands of Charles and the duke. Parlia- 
ment was summoned ; few voices were raised for peace ; a large 
sum of money was voted for the war. Parliament, however, 
refused to trust the king and placed the disbursement of the 
money in the hands of a commission. The lord treasurer, Mid- 
dlesex, opposed the war and at the instigation of Charles and 
Buckingham was impeached on a trumped-up charge of corrup- 
tion. The king looked on passive but disgusted and cynical. 
When he heard of Charles's part in the impeachment of Middlesex 
the old wit flashed up, and he shrewdly remarked: "He will live 



642 KING AND COMMONS [ Charles l. 

to have his belly fall of impeachments." The session ended in 
general good humor and the members went home, well satisfied 
Avith themselves and the young prince who was soon to be at the 
head of the government in name as he was now in fact. 

Buckingham and Charles now had the power in their hands, 
but with inconceivable blindness, instead of letting the marriage 

question rest, began negotiations with the French king 
Mistaken of Louis XIII. for the purpose of securing the hand of 
and Charles, his sister Henrietta Maria. James had promised 

parliament not to interfere with the laws against recu- 
sants, but Louis insisted upon a promise of toleration for 
English Catholics. Parliament, moreover, had indicated its 
desire to attack Spain directly on the seas, her only vulnerable 
point; but the advisers of the king thought only of winning back 
the Palatinate. Twelve thousand Englishmen were enlisted and 
sent into the Rhine country and placed under the command of the 
ruffian Mansfeld, where they were left to die of cold, famine, and 
pestilence. To add to the general discontent the marriage treaty 
with France was duly signed, and the English government pledged 
itself to support the French king against his enemies, — an unfor- 
tunate pledge which was construed by the people later as a promise 
to assist the French king against his rebellious Protestant subjects. 
Here was trouble enough for the future, and in the midst of the 
confusion, the old king died, March 1625. 

The death of James made little change in the political outlook. 
The new king was a handsome, taciturn man of twenty-five, with 

a full share of those external graces of royalty which his 
character'^ Conceited father had so sadly lacked. He was dignified, 

temperate, and serious; he had, moreover, little use for 
the empty-headed parasites whom his father had kept about his 
court. He was industrious ; but possessed no great ability. He 
was reserved and cold. He was lacking both in frankness and 
decision ; and as is common with vacillating natures was incurably 
obstinate. He could neither think clearly nor express himself 
clearly. It was impossible to tie him down to any promise, or 
bind him to a fixed policy. And yet he prided himself on his con- 
sistency. He was disposed to treat his people kindly, but had no 



1625] FIRST PARLIAMENT OF CHARLES 643 

appreciation of their wants, and understood tlieir temper even less 
than his father. All in all he was entirely unfit to play the king 
in such perplexing times. 

The political creed of Charles was a short one ; he believed in 
the "divine right of kings" and also in the "divine right of bish- 
ops." There was no place for a parliament in his sys- 
tem, except as a cumbersome and annoying method of 
securing money for the purposes of government. He had learned 
nothing from his father's blunders; he prided himself rather on 
having had so good a teacher. 

From the first Charles was at war with parliament. It met in 
June 1625. The French marriage had taken place in May. The 
Commons were not pleased, nor did they approve the 
ofCharu7'' attitude of the king toward the English Catholics, 
varUcmient whom he was striving to protect in accordance with the 
marriage contract. They were inclined to find fault, 
moreover, with the management of the war; they distrusted 
Charles and most his favorite Buckingham, whose infiuence at 
court was greater than ever. When Charles asked for a liberal grant 
to meet the burdens of the war, they petitioned for the enforce- 
ment of the laws against recusants and gave him but a small part 
of the money needed. The old tarifE on leather, wine, and wool, 
known as tunnage and poundage, which for one hundred and fifty 
years, it had been customary to grant to every king for life,^ they 
voted for one year only. The bill failed to secure the assent of 
the Lords, and the revenues from this source, which had become 
very important in consequence of the steady growth of English 
commerce, would have been cut off altogether had not the king 
insisted on collecting the tax without an act of parliament. 
Another grievance, fully as serious, grew up out of the promise of 
Charles to assist the French in the war against Spain. He had 
lent a man of war and seven merchant ships to his new allies; but 
Richelieu, the keen minister of Louis XIII. , had no intention of 
entering upon a foreign war, before he had reduced the strength 
of the Huguenot cities somewhat, whose semi-independence, 
secured by the Edict of Nantes, might prove a serious threat to 

1 Prothero, Introduction, Ixxii-lxxviii, pp. 25, 26, 



644 KING AND COMMONS [chaklks £. 

the peace of the realm. Hence the rumor quickly spread m Eng- 
land, that Englishmen had been sent to help Richelieu crush 
French Protestants and added greatly to the disquiet and irri- 
tation of parliament. The members at last turned upon Bucking- 
ham, whom they justly held responsible for the French alliance, 
and attacked him by name. The king to save his minister dis- 
solved his first parliament. 

The parliaments were now steadily feeling their way back to 

the old constitutional grounds which they had occupied in the 

days of Henry IV. when they had nominated the 

FuUieeffort kiuff's council. But for the king to yield to this claim 
of Charles ° . . . 

to control ^^^g to renounce a riarht which his predecessors had 
parliament. ° ^ 

enjoyed since the days of Edward IV. Charles could 
not be expected to give up, therefore, without a struggle, for the 
essence of royalty in his way of thinking lay in the right of the king 
to name his own ministers. Parliament controlled the situa- 
tion, for it had left the king practically without funds, and he was 
compelled to call his second parliament at once. He thought 
if he could get rid of such leaders as Coke, Phelips, and Went- 
worth, he might control the other members, and hit upon the 
novel device of naming these men as sheriffs of their several coun- 
ties, an office which debarred them from standing for reelection. 
By long-established custom the appointees could not refuse this 
high mark of the king's favor and esteem; but the cause suffered 
in nothing for a new leader was found in Sir John Eliot, a Cornish 
gentleman, with the fiery eloquence and devotion to popular rights 
of a Patrick Henry; easily stirred to indignant anger, warm- 
hearted and sympathetic, quick and keen, but not farsighted, and 
a thorough-going radical. He had once been a friend of Buck- 
ingham, but his eyes were now opened to the real worthlessness of 
the minister, and the House had hardly opened when he began the 
attack by demanding an inquiry into the conduct of the public 
business. 

The second parliament met in February 1626. During the 
interval an expedition had been dispatched to Cadiz with the idea 
of seizing the Spanish treasure fleet. The sailors, however, had 
accomplished nothing beyond getting gloriously drunk on Spanish 



1626] TYRAIsrNIES OF CHARLES 645 

wine, and the expedition had returned in disgrace. The House 
laid the responsibility upon Buckingham; it was one more evi- 
dence of the corruption and demoralization which he 
impeacii had wrouglit in the public service. The vote to im- 
peach was carried, and Eliot and Sir Dudley Digges 
presented the charges of the Commons before the Lords. Charles 
had protested when the vote was presented in the House, and now 
in his indignation, under the pretext that the two spokesmen of 
the House had used seditious language, he thrcAv them into prison. 
The other members, however, stood by their colleagues and 
refused to do any business until they had been released. 
The king yielded and the attack upon the favorite was re- 
sumed ; to escape the issue the king was again forced to dissolve 
parliament. 

It was now evident even to Charles that nothing was to be got 
out of parliament without the dismissal of Buckingham and this 
he was determined not to do. To add to his difficulty, 
ciK^fes^^ ^''^ he found himself threatened by war with France in 
spite of his recent alliance; he was too weak to face 
the Spaniards on the seas, or to assist his ally Christian of Den- 
mark, who had been defeated at Lutter, and was suffering for 
lack of the help which Charles had promised. Money Charles 
must have, and if the parliament would not give it to him, he 
must raise it without parliament. He determined therefore to 
resort to the Tudor expedient of a "free gift;" and when the 
people refused to give, in his anger he resorted to the more dan- 
gerous expedient of a forced loan. But here he met with resist- 
ance in the courts as determined and perplexing as in the 
Commons. Chief Justice Crewe of the King's Bench was dis- 
missed. Those who refused the loan were thrown into prison if 
rich; if poor they had soldiers billeted on them, or were pressed 
into the army. Eliot and Wentworth and most of the leaders of 
the Commons, who were among the intractable, also found their 
way into prison. When five of the imprisoned attempted to sue 
out a writ of habeas corpus, by which the king's officer was com- 
pelled to specify the reason upon which he detained the prisoner, 
the king announced that it was not necessary for him to give any 



646 KING AND COMMONS [charles 1. 

reason for imprisoning his subjects, except that such was his good 
pleasure. 

To add to the excitement and confusion, war with France now 
began in real earnest. The English had seized French vessels on 

charge of carrying contraband goods to the Spanish 
af^alri»i^ ISTetherlands, and the French had retaliated by seizing 

the English wine fleet. Charles sent Buckingham with 
an armament of 6,800 men to assist thepeo]3le of LaEochelle, who 
were threatened with attack by the French government. Buck- 
ingham attempted to take the fort of St. Martin on the island of 
Ehe which was held by the government troops and commanded 
the entrance to the harbor, but after losing half his men was 
compelled to retire. Buckingham had really shown some traits of 
a competent commander; but the expedition had been badly 
organized and poorly equipped; his soldiers were mostly raw 
recruits, pressed for the occasion. He was therefore hardly 
responsible for the failure. But public opinion was now too thor- 
oughly wrought up to judge him fairly. The people laid to 
his charge not only the disgrace suffered by English arms but the 
loss of the thousands of men who had been forced to give up their 
lives in the profitless errand. 

The breach between Charles and the nation was now all but 
irreparable. Time might heal it, were he at peace, and were it 

possible to get along without a parliament. But he was 

Serious do r 

nature of not at peace ; on the contrary he was confronted by a 
breach of -it pi i 

Mng and war With the two greatest powers oi the west; the 

country was defenseless and the treasury empty. He 

must nerve himself to meet another parliament. 



CHAPTER II 

THE ERA OF ARBITRARY GOVERN'MElSrT 

CHARLES I., 1628-1640 

The urgency which compelled Charles to summon a parliament 
warned him also to assume an attitude of conciliation. But the 

men who had suffered by the forced loans were in no 
The third mood to be coaxcd or wheedled. The campaign was 
of Charles I. bitter, and the returns went overwhelmingly in favor of 

the popular party ; the nation evidently was with the 
men who had resisted the king, and had sent them all back. 
They were all there; Coke, Wentworth, Eliot, Pym, and many 
others, destined to emerge from the obscurity of private life in the 
exciting struggle of the near future. Their recent sufferings had 
made them desperate while the consciousness of popular support 
and that they spoke for the nation, made them bolder and more 
dangerous than ever. A wiser man than Charles would have 
moved warily ; revolution was in the air. 

It did not take the leaders long to form a plan of action. Coke, 
the veteran of many legal battles, was selected to attack the right 

of arbitrary imprisonment as claimed by the king; Sir 
mom adopt John Eliot, as bold and irrepressible as ever, was to 
a petition lead the attack upon the right of the crown to make 

forced loans ; while Wentworth, so soon to draw back 
from the popular cause, but still high in public confidence and 
the virtual leader of the Commons, was to attack the general 
lawlessness of the servants of the crown. Their first thought was 
to register the displeasure of parliament on the recent acts of the 
crown in a series of resolutions based upon an appeal to the 
statutes and precedents of the past. Many vigorous debates fol- 
lowed in which it became increasingly evident that statute and 
precedent were not altogether on one side; a decision which 
Coke himself had made in 1609, when he sat upon the bench, was 

647 



648 ERA OF AEBITRARY GOYERNMEISTT [charlkb I. 

cited against him. It was also evident that, however the resolu- 
tions might be worded, they were virtually an arraignment of 
the king, and some, as Wentworth, who cared little for theories of 
the constitution and much for the dignity of the administra- 
tion, wished to "save the king's face" as the Chinese proverb 
runs. The Commons, therefore, under Wentworth's inspira- 
tion, decided to bring in a bill which, while ignoring the 
question of what had been law, should set definite legal limits to 
the activities of the crown for the future. Here, however, Went- 
worth was defeated by the king himself, who had not yet learned 
to trust the clear-sighted leader of the House and further had no 
wish to be confronted by a list of prohibitions such as he knew that 
Coke and Eliot would certainly present to him. He thought, 
therefore, to avoid the issue, by asking the Commons whether his 
"royal word and promise" were not sufficient guarantee for the 
observance of the laws of the realm. The Commons were willing 
to give up the bill; but they were not satisfied with a general 
"blanket" promise, and insisted that there be some definite under- 
standing between king and parliament as to what were the customs 
of the realm. At the suggestion of Coke, therefore, they changed 
the bill to the form of a petition of right which stated the griev- 
ances of the nation, recited the existing laws bearing upon each, 
and called upon the king to give his word that hereafter he would 
instruct his servants to obey them. That is, instead of making a 
new law, the Commons proposed to fall back upon the appeal to 
existing statutes. A petition really offered them a great advan- 
tage over a bill, since the bill must wait until the end of the ses- 
sion for the royal assent, but a petition, which was of the nature of 
a trnce or convention, could receive an immediate answer from the 
king, and yet, when so approved by the crown, was none the less a 
statute, having the effect of a reenactment of the older laws 
involved. The air thus having been cleared, the Commons might 
proceed with confidence to the consideration of the subsidies for 
which the king asked. 

Thus appeared the famous Petition of Rights an event fully as 
noteworthy in the annals of English constitutional history as the 
appearance of the Great Charter in the reign of John. Like the 



1628] THE PETITIOK OF RIGHT 649 

Great Charter it purported to be simply a restatement of the laws 

of the realm ; like the Charter it in reality challenged the whole 

drift of the English constitution for the century preced- 
The Petition ^ ± 

of Bight, ing, and diverted it into entirely new channels ; like 

the Charter it marks, not the end of a struggle passed, 

but the beginning of a struggle at hand; yet, like the Charter also, 

it was a great gain for the popular party, for it cleared their 

minds, and set before them a definite scheme, or party platform; 

that is a statement of the things which they proposed to secure.^ 

The chief objection of Charles to the Petition was centered 

upon an article which appealed to a law of Edward III. against 

suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, that forbade the 

The Petition 

signed. royal judges to refuse the writ under any circumstances. 

The king looked to the Lords for help, and for a 
moment, although they supported the Petition, they threatened to 
endanger its whole force by proposing to insert a clause which dis- 
claimed any purpose on the part of the petitioners to detract from 
"that sovereign power" wherewith the crown had been vested for 
the protection of the subject. The House, however, stood firm 
and the Lords withdrew the objectionable amendment, Charles 
then consulted his judges, who encouraged him to think that, 
although accepting the Petition, by the delays of the courts he 
might yet after all defeat the habeas corpus section. Fortified by 
this decision, the king yielded, but in terms so ambiguous that the 
suspicions of the Commons were 'aroused. In their anger they 
brought out the old whip, which had so often made Charles quail 
before; they proceeded to draw up a formal remonstrance, and, 
finally as their courage rose, attacked the duke of Buckingham by 
name as "the grievance of grievances." Charles attempted to 
stay action by forbidding the Commons to proceed with the 
remonstrance, but at the threatened impeachment of the favorite, 
he yielded, and on June 7 appeared before the Houses, and pro- 
nounced the ancient formula,^ which long usage had established as 
the legal mode of giving the royal assent. The members broke 

^ For text of Petition of Bight see Taswell-Langmead, pp. 453-456, or 
Gardiner's Const. Docs, of the Puritan Revolution, pp. 1-4. 

^ Soit droit fait comme est desirex; "Let the law be as desired." 



650 EEA OP ARBITRARY GOVERNMENT [charlbs i. 

into a storm of applause ; the good news ran into the streets ; can- 
non were fired, and bonfires lighted. Throughout the kingdom 
there was wild exultation over the victory, which all supposed had 
now set the long quarrel forever at rest. 

In the exuberance of good will the Commons at once granted 
five subsidies, amounting to about £350,000, which they had virtu- 
ally promised in case the king signed the Petition, and 
xtrance then proceeded to consider the granting of tunnage and 

poundage for life. Unfortunately, however, for the 
continuance of tliis good feeling, the suspicions which the recent 
conduct of the king had awakened were not quieted, and before 
settling the question of tunnage and poundage, the Commons 
after all determined to present a remonstrance, setting forth their 
opinions of the general conduct of the government, particularly 
of the continued levying of the duties in question without the 
sanction of parliament ; also to call for the removal of Bucking- 
ham from the king's service. To prevent the delivering of this 
remonstrance Charles adjourned parliament for six months. 

In this memorable session parliament had also taken up the 

grievances of the Puritans against the Arminians, as the anti-Cal- 

vinist party in the church had now come to be called, 

The quarrel f^-Qiii Amiiiiius a Dutch reformer who had opposed the 

in the church. _ ^^ 

SAvay of the Genevan's theological ideas in the Low Coun- 
tries. The English Arminians protested against the extreme Prot- 
estantism of the Puritans, holding that the doctrines and ceremonies 
of the English Church, sanctioned by the practices of a thousand 
years, should be maintained, and that it was not necessary to 
repudiate these in order to repudiate the teachings of Papal Cathol- 
icism, The party had long exercised a great influence at Oxford 
and had advanced rapidly under James. They leaned naturally 
toward Episcopacy as the Puritans leaned toward Presbyterianism. 
With the .Stuarts, moreover, they had many things in common, 
and in the recent quarrels were inclined to support the crown as 
the Puritans were inclined to support the Commons, denouncing 
the parliament and preaching the payment of the forced loan as a 
duty. As soon therefore as parliament had been prorogued, 
Charles hastened to show his appreciation of these voices that had 



1628] WILLIAM LAUD 651 

been raised in his behalf in his time of need ; he brought William 
Laud from the unimportant see of Bath and Wells to the great 
see of London; he rewarded others by promotions and richer 
livings. 

Laud was thoroughly detested by the Puritans. He was a 
little, red-faced man of mean appearance, a scholar of some ability 

and undoubtedly sincere; but he was also narrow- 
LondJn minded, obstinate, and devoid of tact. In the great 

Puritan stronghold of London he was soon in hot 
water. He attempted to assure greater respect for the "Com- 
munion Table" by ordering it to be placed at the east end of the 
churches, whereas the Puritan had adopted the practice of plac- 
ing it at the side of the church, near the pulpit. The Puritans, 
also, had generally adopted the practice of itinerant preaching and 
lecturing. But Laud would allow no clergymali to preach save in 
his own pulpit, or where he had been specially licensed by his 
bishop. Some of these matters in this practical age seem trivial 
enough, but to the Puritan, Laud's innovations were the first step 
backward toward the old church, and the diocese soon became the 
scene of bitter strife. Thus the schism which was opening in the 
church became identified with the schism which was opening in 
the state. 

Two other events of this period also powerfully affected the 
drift of parties: the defection of Wentworth from the popular 

party, and the assassination of Buckingham. The reign 

andBuchittg- of Wentworth in the Commons had ended when the 
ham. 

bill was dropped for the Petition, and the reign of 

Eliot and Coke had begun. He had nobly led in the attempt to 

defend the nation against the disorder which was sure to follow 

the continued violation of the rights of subjects by the king's 

officers. He now shrank from the greater disorder threatened by 

what he believed to be a direct attack upon the dignity of the 

crown. His lips, however, had been closed by the very power 

which he had sought to serve, and, through the rest of that 

memorable session, he had sat sullen and silent. Made as he 

was, he could not follow in the wake of such as Coke or even 

Eliot ; nor yet could he long remain silent or allow his splendid 



G52 ERA OF ARBITRARY GOVERls^ME]SI"T [cnARtEsl. 

powers to rust in inaction. He therefore withdrew from all 
further opposition in the House and soon entered into the king's 
service as heartily and energetically as he had once led in the 
Commons. Charles, on his part, who now began to understand 
the man, although he never fully trusted him until the very last, 
admitted him to the peerage as Baron Wentworth, and finally sent 
him home to Yorkshire as president of the Council of the North, 
where his fearless energy performed a real service in reducing the 
lawless elements of that much-distressed region. Later Charles 
gave him a jolace in the Privy Council. 

Bnckingham was murdered at Portsmouth, August 23, by a 
poor fanatic, named Felton. The murder was inspired by per- 
sonal spite and not by political hatred, and yet so 
ofBucklna-^ unpojoular was the duke, that the people took up the 
^1628' ^"^' ^^' assassin as a hero, a martyr, and followed him to the 
Tower with benedictions. To Charles, Buckingham 
was the real martyr. 

When parliament met again in January it was soon evident 
that the death of Buckingham had made no difference in the 
Dissolution of position of parties. The struggle went on just as 
liamenfof'^'' ^^fo^®- The question of tunnage and poundage was 
M^archio ^^ once taken up. Merchants, encouraged by the 
1629. remonstrance of the last session, had refused to pay 

the tax on the ground that it was contrary to the Petition of 
Right, and the king's officers had seized their goods. The 
House, excited and angry over what they regarded as the king's 
mendacity, although nothing had been said about tunnage and 
poundage in the Petition, summoned the royal officers before 
them to answer the charge of collecting money illegally. Charles, 
however, would not allow the officers to appear, declaring that he 
alone was -responsible for what had been done. Meanwhile, the 
House had also been waging warfare upon the Arminian clergy. 
Charles, who as usual did not understand the real spirit of the 
Commons, thought to give their ardor a chance to cool off, and 
resorted to the expedient of preventing action by a series of 
adjournments. But this only annoyed and irritated, and when on 
March 2, 1029, the Speaker, in accordance with instructions, 



1629] ELIOT'S RESOLUTIONS 653 

attempted to declare the House adjourned for the third time 
within a fortnight, two members, Holies and Valentine, hurled 
him back into the chair and held him down while the doors were 
locked against the entrance of the king's messenger. A wild 
tumult followed, in the midst of which, while the Speaker struggled 
and wept, while the House raged, while swords were 
resoiuWms ^^^^ ^^^ blows Were falling, Eliot managed to present 
three resolutions which declared all those who favored 
Popery or Arminianism, all who supported the king in the collect- 
ing of tunnage and poundage without the consent of parliament, 
or even those who paid the illegal imposts, to be capital enemies 
to the kingdom and the Commonwealth.^ When the Speaker 
refused to put the resolutions. Holies promptly put them for him, 
and the House carried them by tumultuous shouts of applause. 
Then the House adjourned. 

The Eliot resolutions were a declaration of war; the House 
had declared its purpose to hold those who supported the crown 
henceforth as traitors to the kingdom and the common- 
of^EiilT^'^^ wealth. The king acted just as Eliot and his followers 
Vai^iine'^ no doubt knew that he would act; he dissolved parlia- 
ment on March 10,^ and arrested the men who had 
been prominent in the scenes of March 2. They pleaded that they 
were not answerable outside of parliament for deeds within its 
walls; but the judges refused to admit the plea, fined the culprits 
heavily and sent them to prison to remain until they should sub- 
mit to the king. Of the ten men who were arrested all but three 
soon yielded. Eliot after three years confinement succumbed to 
the damp walls of the Tower, dying there of consumption in 1632, 
but stout of heart and unconquered to the last. Valentine and 
Strode were not released until just before the assembling of the 
"Short Parliament" in 1640. 

Eleven years of arbitrary tyranny were now to pass before 
Charles again summoned a parliament. The period is known as 
the first era of Stuart despotism. Its history is the record on the 

'For text of resolution, see Gardiner, Const. Docs., pp. 16, 17. 
2 For the king's declaration of reasons for his actions, see Gardiner, 
Const. Docs., pp. 17-31. 



654 ERA OF ARBITKAEY GOVERNMENT [charlesI. 

part of the king of a desperate struggle to secure financial independ- 
ence with little heed to the spirit of English laws ; on the part 
of the nation, of a like struggle to secure its rights 
The eleven within the constitution. In this strugsrle, the common 

years of on 7 

*yi"^"^!W' law courts, subservient as they were to the crown, were 

1629-1640. ' -^ ' 

yet the only hope of the people, deprived now of the 

championship of parliament. In one way, however, these years 

were not without compensation. It was useless for the king to 

think of taking any further part in the great war which was still 

desolating the continent, and he made the best terms he could 

with his enemies, coming to terms first with France in 1629 and 

with Spain in 1630. lie did not abandon the hope of saving the 

Palatinate for Frederick, however, and occasionally attempted 

negotiations with that end in view ; but his promises or his threats 

were alike despised by men who had no respect for a prince who 

had neither soldiers to fight nor money with which to equip them. 

Had Charles been a thrifty monarch like Henry VII., the task 

to which he now set himself would have been difficult enough. 

But he was not thrifty ; as Henrietta Maria said of 
Schemes for t ■ ^ 

raising him, he was always a poor housekeeper, and the 

treasurer, Lord Weston, was soon at his wits' end to 
secure money to defray the most ordinary expenses of govern- 
ment. The king's officers still continued to collect tunnage and 
poundage, in spite of the threatening remonstrance of the last 
parliament. At first the merchants protested, and some even 
braved the wrath of the Privy Council, one Eichard Chambers 
bitterly declaring in their presence that even in Turkey, "mer- 
chants were not so screwed and wrung" by the government. Yet 
as it became evident that parliament could not protect them, the 
merchants submitted and made the best terms they could with the 
king's collectors. The duty derived from tunnage and poundage 
alone, however, was far from sufficient to meet the needs of the 
court, and in 1630 the king resorted to the old expedient of 
Distraint of Knighthood,^ compelling all men of full age holding 
lands to the value of £40 a year to receive knighthood or pay a 
fine. Tunnage and poundage had irritated the great merchant 

iProthero, S. S., pp. 133, 176. 



1633, 1634] FIRST LEVY OF SHIP MOISTEY 655 

class; this expedient touched the rich landowners, who might 
well plead that present conditions, so foreign to feudal customs, 
had virtually annulled the old law, "which had not been put in 
force for more than a century. " ^ 

In 1G33 the king's ministers hit upon a still more ingenious 
but offensive device for filling the royal coffers. They established 
special forest courts and called upon all holders of 
titles and land, that had once been forest land, to prove their 
titles. Some families had been in possession of such 
estates since the thirteenth century, but if the deed were lost or 
contained a flaw, so that the owner could not make good his title 
when challenged by the king, he was compelled to pay a heavy 
fine; for by English law no length of possession could give a title 
against the king. In 1632 the king had also returned to the 
granting of monopolies, although he kept within the letter of the 
law of 1624 which had forbidden such grants to individuals, by 
creating corporations to enjoy the privileges of the royal grant. 
Corporations began to blossom without number; individuals by 
organizing into a company and making a handsome donative to 
the royal treasury, might secure the sole right of selling such 
articles as coal, brick, soap,^ beer, wine, starch, or any one of a 
score or more of the common objects of daily consumption. 

The king's ministers in the meanwhile were ransacking the 
records for other precedents which could be turned to the enrich- 
ment of the treasury without a technical violation of 

The fiTSt levy 

of ship the law. In 1634 they hit upon the perilous expedient 

■money, p i • -,• ■ 

October 20, of Icvymg a direct tax upon certain towns under the 
guise of the ancient ship money. Charles had lately 
been seriously debating a project of alliance with the Spaniards 
against the Dutch. But England had no ships, and Charles had 
no mind to call a parliament to ask for money for such a purpose. 
William Noy, his Attorney General, pointed out to him that the 
laws of England imposed upon the coast towns the duty of fur- 



1 Gardiner, VII, p. 167. 

2 For the interesting soap monopoly — "Papal Soap," etc., see Gardiner 
VII, pp. 71-76. 



056 ERA OF ARBITRARY GOVERKMENT ■ [charlesI. 

nishing ships for the navy m times of danger.* Some recent 
piracies on the coast were thought to be of sufficient importance 
to supply the conditions which justified a resort to this ancient 
custom, and on October 20, 1634 Charles issued the first of the 
series of famous writs. ^ By this writ tlie magistrates of London 
and other port towns were ordered to provide a certain number of 
ships of war to be ready at Portsmouth on the first of the follow- 
ing March, and empowered to assess the inhabitants for the pur- 
pose of building, equipping, and maintaining the ships and their 
crews for six montlis. The tonnage and equipment were also 
specified, but the ships ordered were so large that most of the 
towns could not build them in their own yards, and they were 
therefore compelled to give the money instead. 

The writ of October 1034 had been limited to the coast towns; 
but the next year, August 4, Charles repeated the experiment and 

upon a much larger scale, sending the writ to every 
tfirdwruf county of England and Wales, thus virtually demanding 

money since the towns of the interior could not be 
expected to build ships themselves. The king justified the exten- 
sion of the writ by the plea that, since the whole country was to be 
benefited by strengthening the navy, the whole country ought to 
bear the burden. It took no clear head to see the purport of this 
levy of ship money. The tax was not large; yet a small tax could 
establish a precedent, and if once fixed, there was nothing to pre- 
vent the king from freeing the crown forever from parliamentary 
control. The issue of a new book of rates, which added £10,000 
to the royal income, also called attention to the progress which the 
king was making in securing an independent royal revenue, and 
when, October 9, 1636, a third levy of ship money was ordered, it 
could no longer be doubted that the king proposed nothing less 
than to establish in this form a permanent annual tax. 

All classes united in condemning the measure, but Charles, 
fortified by an earlier decision of his judges that ship money was 
legal in case of danger, and supported by the sympathy of Laud 

1 Ships had been levied upon the coast tovvus by Elizabeth and as late 
as 1626 by Charles himself. 

2 For text of writ see Gardiner, Const. Docs., 37-39. 



1633-1636] ARCHBISHOP LATJl) 657 

and the expressed wish of Wentworth that the system might be ex- 
tended to the support of the army as well, prepared to collect the 
tax. Then some of the bolder spirits determined to 

johnHamp- fio-ht the matter out in the courts, and refused to 
den's case. => " ' _ 

pay the tax until the king should sue for it. Among 
these was John Hampden, a young Buckinghamshire squire. 
The tax for which he was held, levied upon some lands in Stoke 
Mandeville, amounted only to the pitiful sum of twenty shillings, 
but he determined not to pay it, until the Court of Exchequer had 
heard his case. The earlier opinion of the judges, as well as their 
well known subserviency to the king, did not afford the people 
much hope of a fair hearing. What was their surprise and joy, 
therefore, when it was learned that five of the twelve judges had 
objected to the writs. Yet technically the victory was with the 
king and he insisted that all arrears must be paid at once. 
Tyranny could go no farther; parliamentary government in Eng- 
land apparently was at an end; Euglishmen were to be governed 
henceforth without any "king-yoking policy." 

Fortunately, however, there was another cause as dear, to the 
hearts of the great mass of the English people as their political 

liberties, in which they saw what they wanted even 
b&Mh^of^' ^^oi'6 clearly and definitely, and that was their Puritan- 
canterbury, igjj^_ Charles had already identified himself with 

Laud's scheme of reform in his London diocese, but in 
1633 he was rash enough to make him archbishop of Canterbury. 
Laud at once determined to carry out his ideas of ecclesiastical 
reform in the larger sphere iu which this elevation now gave him a 
free hand. He raised his friends to the high places of the church, 
and then with the support of the Court of High Commission 
began to rule the Puritan clergy with a rod of iron. In 1634 he 
reissued James's "Declaration of Sports," which permitted good 
church people to engage in archery and dancing on Sunday after- 
noon; a measure which deeply offended the entire Puritan com- 
munity by publicly authorizing the desecration of their one holy 
day. He also revised the old custom of "metropolitan visita- 
tions," traveling over his archiepiscopal see, prying into the 
practices of each church, large or small, sending obstinate clergy- 



658 ERA OF ARBITRARY GOVERNMENT [chaklesI 

men before the Court of High Commission, and setting things to 
rights according to "the pitch of reformation which was floating 
in his own brain." The indomitable archbishop spent the three 
years from 1633-1636 in the highly important service of introduc- 
ing the quarrel about vestments and the proper placing of church 
furniture into every little village in England, and succeeded in so 
irritating and alarming the people that they were thoroughly con- 
vinced that he intended nothing short of the restoration of the 
authority of the pope. 

During these years of unchecked tyranny the Star Chamber 

also contributed its share to the disquiet and irritation of the 

Puritan community. In 1628 Dr. Leighton a Scotch 

Tyrannies physician wlio had Settled in London had got up a 

of the Court Jr J & r 

ci^^^her petition for the abolition of Episcopacy, which he pre- 
sented to parliament. The next year he published his 
petition, which he had elaborated into a book, attacking both the 
king and the bishops, and laying to their charge all the sins of the 
English people. In 1630 the vigorous author was sentenced by 
the Star Chamber to be flogged, have his nose slit, one ear cut off, 
and his face branded. Another victim of Star Chamber justice 
was William Prynne, who in 1633 published a venomous attack 
upon the stage which the Puritans had already marked as perni- 
cious and immoral. The stage had degenerated in the era which 
had followed Shakspere, and there was much ground for Puritan 
hostility. But unfortunately for Prynne the king and his court 
were great playgoers and the queen had herself taken part in a pri- 
vate mask. The result was that the Star Chamber took the matter 
up, and Prynne was expelled from the bar, deprived of his uni- 
versity degree, set in the pillory, and shorn of his ears. In 1637 
Prynne again fell into the hands of the Star Chamber. 
Lmuiand Laud with his other mischievous activities had 

the censor- 
ship of the attempted a vigorous censorship of the press. But 

secret presses continued to thrive; frequently also 

books were sent to Holland for printing; and in spite of Laud's 

vigilance, a vigorous and stirring literature, representing the 

views which he was struggling to repress, was steadily gaining 

circulation among the people. Among the leaders in this under- 



1633-1639] WENTWORTH IN IRELAND 659 

ground warfare were the irrepressible Prynne, now more dangerous 
than ever since he had lost his ears, Henry Burton a clergyman of 
London, and Dr. Bastwick a physician of Colchester. The three 
men were seized and received the sentence of , the court. Public 
feeling was roused to the boiling point. An immense crowd 
cheered the "three renowned soldiers of Jesus Christ" and strewed 
flowers in their way as they passed to the pillory. Not satisfied 
with cutting off the ears of Bastwick and Burton and gleaning 
Prynne's stumps, the court sent the culprits to remote prisons at 
Carnarvon, Lancaster, and Launceston. Even here friends were 
found to minister to the victims of prerogative, and Charles was 
finally compelled to send them off to the Channel Islands in order 
to get them out of all touch with their sympathizers. 

In the other domains which recognized the Stuarts as sover- 
eigns, the king's policy of having his own way in spite of the 

prejudices or preferences of the people, as in England, 
in Ireland, was succeeding wherever physical force, or the brutality 

of the courts, could overawe the people, and with the 
same results. In 1632 Wentworth had been appointed Lord 
Deputy of Ireland and the next year entered upon the administra- 
tion of his duties in that long-abused land. Chichester had 
retired in 1614, and his successors had continued the settling of 
English colonists until the parts of Leinster included in Wexford, 
Longford, and Westmeath, and Leitrim of Connanght, had become 

anglicized in much the same way as Ulster. The last 

and the deputy, Falkland, had arranged with Charles in return 

^'Graces." i. ^ ^ ' o 

for certain concessions to secure him a grant of £4,000 

a year in order to meet the expenses of the Irish army. By these 

concessions, "Graces" as they were called, Charles agreed to allow 

the Irish to take an oath of ajlegiance instead of the oath of 

supremacy; to abolish the fine for not attending church; to 

accept a title to land of sixty years standing as final even against 

the crown. When Wentworth took up his duties, however, the 

subsidy had not yet been passed upon by the Irish parliament ; 

hence the question of the Graces was still pending. 

The new deputy was a thorough-going man of affairs and prided 

himself on systematic methods in which there was no play for 



660 ERA OF ARBITRARY GOVERJSTMENT [cuasles i. 

sentiment, no favor for the rich, no compassion for the powerful. 
This system he called "Thorough." He at once introduced 

some much-needed and wise reforms both in the civil 
(7«dftfe°'"*''^ service and the army, where the peculation and job- 
"riorowy/i" ^®^*y ^^ officials had introduced general confusion. 

He also attempted to impart some dignity to the State 
Church, which, plundered by government officials and debarred 
from the sympathy of the population, was leading a beggar's life, 
loved by none and despised by all. It soon became evident, how- 
ever, that Wentworth had been guided in these measures, not by 
any sense of justice, but merely by reasons of policy. He per- 
suaded the Irish parliament to vote a large subsidy to the crown, 
and then announced that the Graces, to which the king had 
given his word, should be submitted without the clause designed 
to protect and assure the Irish landowners. His real purpose 
appeared later, when he began to make plans for a plantation of 
Connaught similar to that of Ulster. Great indignation and 
unrest followed; no landowner could feel sure of his title, when 
the king's word could be so lightly set aside by his minister. 
Wentworth was in the midst of these schemes for spoiling the land- 
lords of Connaught, when Charles and Laud decided that they 
needed him and his system of Thorough at home. 

In the meanwhile the principles of Charles and Laud were 
working out results in a distant quarter of the world in ways that 

they little thought of. Far back in Henry VII. 's reign 
of'charJcs England had thought to get her share from discovery 
thfcoionfJ^ in the new world by fitting out the Cabots and sending 

them off into the western seas. They brought back a 
better knowledge of the great northern continent, but in the 
midst of the stirring scenes of the Tudor reigns Englishmen had 
little thought of the new world, save as a place to hunt for gold 
mines or Spanish treasure fleets. Nevertheless the discoveries of 
the Cabots served as a foundation upon which to base claims, 
when in the later years of Elizabeth men like Sir Humphrey Gil- 
bert and Raleigh pointed out the advantages of securing in the 
new world colonies, or trading stations, similar to those which 
European nations had long maintained in the Orient as the basis 



1607-1640] ENGLISH .COLOISriES IN NEW WORLD 661 

of their oriental trade. No one yet dreamed of the advantage 
which these settlements in the western wilderness would offer to 
England in the future in furnishing a field where her excess popu- 
lation might find room, or of the new empire which was to grow 

from such small seed. Still trading companies had 
uementf been organized, and had proceeded to plant stations on 

the western shores of the Atlantic. It was not, how- 
ever, until the year 1007 in the settlement of Jamestown, that 
these efforts attained any success. Almost at the same time 
another colony was settled in the Barbadoes. Great difficulty was 
found in persuading Englishmen to leave their native land and 
face the trials and dangers of the wilderness simply upon the pros- 
pect of gain ; nor was it until the more powerful motive of religion 
and love of liberty came to the help of the trading companie3 
that their early plantations began really to flourish. In 1620 the 

famous little band of Brownists, or Separatists, who for 

ThePii- some years had been living in exile in Holland, encour- 

gi'ims, 1620. J ° ' 

aged by the patronage of the London Company, deter- 
mined to try their fortunes in the new world. They landed at a 
site which John Smith had already named New Plymouth from 
the home of the great western company. The coast was bleak and 
unpromising, and the New England winter, which had already 
begun, gave them but a surly welcome. From the first their life 
was a hand to hand struggle with death. Few recruits joined 
them, for the life of exile had as yet little attraction for the sturdy 
English yeoman. After 1629, however, the alarming strides 
which the despotism of church and state were making at home, the 
revelation of the weakness of parliament in the presence of a wil- 
ful monarch, led many to despair of ever securing in England the 
rights which the laws had promised them. A new tide, therefore, 

from the great Puritan class very soon set in towards 
mi'^raMoL ^^® shore of Massachusetts Bay, and the emigrants were 
of the years ^qq^ numbered by the thousands. The exiles, however, 

1629-1640. -^ 

had no idea of extending the toleration to others which 
they sought for themselves. It was not long before a sort of 
Puritan Star Chamber in the new world was as busy whipping 
backs, or slitting noses and cropping ears, as the more august body 



662 EKA OF ARBITRARY GOVERNMENT [chables I. 

at home. Yet there were some who felt the inconsistency, and 
dared to raise their voices in favor of real freedom of worship or 
of religions thought. Among them was Roger Williams who had 
Joined the colony in 1631, who first saw clearly that the only sure 
way to secure toleration was to make matters of religion indepen- 
dent of the state. The Massachusetts Bay colonists were not 
ready for such radical doctrines, and finally, in 1637, drove out 
Williams and fi^e others of the same mind, to seek a new home on 
the Narragansett Bay where they began the settlement of Rhode 
Island. 

While the Puritans were thus seeking to escape the rod of the 
church which sought to make them conform to its hated cere- 
monies, it would be strange if those who stood at the 
TheCaivert« other extreme of the Ensflish religious community, who 

and the to & j •> 

Mariiiand j^^d borne a much heavier burden of persecution and for 

colony, i6o2. ^ 

a far longer time, should not also cast longing eyes to 
the new world, where they might be free from the hated recusancy 
laws, and where their own ministers might teach them with- 
out the constant threat of the hangman's cord. The leaders of 
this movement were the fine old Catholic family of the Calverts, at 
whose head was Lord Baltimore. They named their settlement 
after their Catholic queen, Maryland, and Charles had 
toieraium their charter so drawn as to admit luil religious liberty. 
hyiawin Here was a practical solution of the question of tolera- 
tion. From the first. Catholics and Protestants dwelt 
together in the colony upon equal terms, and by common consent 
questions of religious difference were ignored; their first free 
assembly confirmed by formal law to members of all religions, free- 
dom of worship and political equality. 

Laud was not pleased to see Englishmen thus escaping from 
under the discipline of his Court of High Commission and 
attempted to keep avowed nonconformists at home by 
^fLaud persuading the council to for])id noblemen or gentry to 
to cheeky leave the kingdom without the royal license and by 
compelling people of lower rank to present a certificate 
of conformity. This, however, did not check the flight of non- 
conformists who continued to flock to the new world by the thou- 



1592-1597] laud's REFORMS IJST SCOTLAIsTD 663 

sands, until the outbreak of the civil wars promised them better 
things at home. They were a hardy race, these exiles for con- 
science sake ; uncompromising moralists, who made of religion a 
system, not of loving service of one's fellow men, but of grim 
prohibitions; unlovely they were, and yet sturdy material for the 
planting of a nation. It has been estimated that at the outbreak 
of the American Kevolution seventy- five per cent of the people of 
English blood of the northern colonies were descendants of the 
men and women who had been driven out of England by the 
tyranny of Charles and his little archbishop. 

Laud's attention, however, was soon diverted to Scotland where 
there was far more to attract his mischievous itching for reform 

than in the humble colonies. In Scotland the nobles 
Laud's 1 . . , 

reforms 171 and people, it will be remembered, had combined for 

Scotland. ^ ^ , ' 

the overthrow of the ancient church. They had had 
no Henry VIII. or Elizabeth to restrain their excesses, and it was 
not long before the nobles and the Protestant clergy were quarrel- 
ing over the division of the spoil. In this strife the nobles got 
the lion's share. Bishops were retained, but they were ushered 

into their office without consecration and were allowed 

The . . . . 

"Tuichan no jurisdiction. I heir principal function was to 

Bishops." 

draw what was left of the revenues of the church 
from the people, and hand them over to the nobles. The 
shrewd Scotsmen were not deceived, and in derision called 
them "tulchan bishops," from the tnlclian, or decoy calf, which 
the Scotch farmer was accustomed to set up alongside of a 
bereaved cow to persuade her to let down her milk. After a 
bitter struggle of over twenty years, the people finally got rid of 
Preshyteri- ^^® tulchaii bishops and succeeded in introducing 
ffeS,^*'^''" Presbyterianism, pure and simple. The affairs of the 
1592-1597. church were to be regnlated by a General Assembly, 
composed of clergymen and laymen, elected for that purpose. 
From the assembly there was a regular graded series of similar 
bodies leading down through provincial synods and presbyteries to 
the local kirk session. James got little comfort out of these 
republican bodies; the ministers showed little respect for royalty 
and fearlessly abused him from their pulpits. An attempt on his 



664 EEA. OF ARBITRARY GOVERNMENT [charles I. 

part in 1597 to punish such insolence, brought on a tumult, and 

the king was compelled to flee from Edinburgh, only to return 

„ .. , ri- r, in a few weeks with an armed force, sufficient to restore 
Keestahlish- ' 

mcnt of order. The nobles, also, came to his help : the rule of the 

episcopacy, ' ' -t^ ' 

-'55''- clergy was overthrown, and the hated tulchan bishops 

were brought back. In 1618 James forced through a packed 

assembly a nominal acceptance of the so-called Articles of Perth, 

by which communicants were to kneel to receive the 

Tlic jLtHcIcs 

of Perth, Lord's Supper, Easter and Christmas were to be kept, 
the Lord's Supper and baptism might be administered 
in private houses in case of serious illness, and children be con- 
firmed by bishops. Here, however, James was shrewd enough to 
stop, and here matters rested, until Laud took the hard-headed 
Scotsmen in hand to mould them to his ideas of uniformity. The 
Church of Scotland was to be a complete copy of that of England, 
a difficult end to gain even had Laud and Charles been wise men. 
In October 1625 Charles had issued an Act of Revoca- 

Tl)e Art of 

RevocaUoii, tion, by which the church property in the hands of the 
nobles was to be turned over to the crown. The act, 
although modified by a subsequent offer of compensation, at once 
alienated the nobles, and left the king without tlie support of the 
only party which had been willing to help him. He now attempted 
to force the Prayer Book upon the ministers and increase the 
poAver of the bishops. The cry of popery was raised, and all classes 
united with the ministers in opposing the innovations. 

In the summer of 1637 the attempt of the dean of Edinburgh 
to use the hated forms, brought on a riot in which stones were 
thrown, cathedral windows smashed, and the bishop 
"TahUs." narrowly escaped with his life. The year was spent in 
a vain effort of king and people to come to some agreement, which 
failed because neither would yield. In 1638 the Scots committed 
their interests into the hands of four committees, or "Tables," one 
for each of the four orders, the nobles, the gentry, the 

The Na- . o .; > 

tionaicovc- clergy, and the cities. The first frnit of the labor of 

lldllt 1638. 

the Tables was the famous "National Covenant" by 
which the people bound themselves to resist all changes in religion 
"to the utmost of the power that God had put in their hands." 



THE FIRST bishops' WAR 665 

The document was signed amidst great enthusiasm. All classes 
were represented, and "such as refused were accounted no better 
than papists." 

Charles saw that he must yield, or lose Scotland. He was 
without money ; his army was small and poorly equipped; and in 
Th A^^ ^^® condition of the English temper, which was as 

ci' S^ ' threatening as the temper of the Scots, he knew he 
1638. could not depend upon England in case of war. He 

therefore allowed his representative, James Hamilton, to withdraw 
the Prayer Book, to the great joy of the Scots. In November 
1638 Hamilton- summoned a General Assembly at Glasgow. The 
laity predominated, and when their spirit warned Hamilton that 
nothing but continued opposition was to be expected, he attempted 
to dissolve them. They in turn denied his right, as a repre- 
sentative of the state, to interfere iu spiritual matters, and pro- 
ceeded to abolish the Episcopacy. No one believed that Charles 
would submit, and the Scots prepared to fight for their cause. 

In the summer Charles gathered an army of twenty thousand 
pressed men, taken from the northern counties, and advanced to 
Berwick. The Scots faced them at Dunse Law twelve 
Bishop's miles away, interior iii numbers but superior in training 
and morale, and everything else that goes to make up an 
efficient army. Many, like their leader Alexander Leslie, had 
already periled their lives in the Protestant cause in Germany, and 
were not afraid of powder. Charles for once took counsel with 
discretion, and on the 18th of June, in the Treaty of Berwick, 
agreed to refer the grievances of the Scots to a free parliament 
and assembly. When the new assembly came together, however, 
it simply reenacted the acts of the assembly of Glasgow; the 
parliament, from which the bishops were excluded, was about to 
confirm its acts, when Charles pronounced it adjourned. The 
angry Scots, in reply, denied the right of the king to adjourn 
parliament without its consent, charged Charles with trickery and 
deceit, and prepared again for war. 

It was at this moment that Charles, at Laud's suggestion, sum- 
moned Wentworth from Ireland to a place in the council. From 
the first the influence of the minister with the king silenced all 



666 EKA OF ARBITRARY GOVERNMENT [ohaklesI. 

other voices. He saw that Cliarles must force the Scots to sub- 
mit, but that to do this he must have the help of the nation. A 
Scottish war might a^ain unite parties and lead the 

Wentworth o o j. 

in the obdurate parliament to relent and open its purse strings. 

But conciliation was necessary; and as a first step 
Valentine and Strode were released from the Tower after eleven 
years of imprisonment. The effect, however, was largely lost by 
the appointment to the Great Seal, of Finch, the Speaker of the 
parliament of 1620, the very man whom Valentine and Holies had 
held in the chair while Eliot offered his famous resolutions, and 
who had since made himself specially obnoxious by an unqualified 
support of ship money. Wentworth also was made earl of Straf- 
ford. 

The fourth parliament of Charles met on the 13th of April 
1640. Many changes had taken place since the last parliament 

came together. Eliot had died in prison; Coke and 
Parliament," others Were also dead, and Wentworth had gone over to 

the enemy. But John Hampden was there, the hero 
of the ship money fight, and John Pym also was there, now sixty 
years of age, a veteran in parliamentary warfare, who had sat in 
every parliament since 1621. He had once held a position in the 
Exchequer ; he had also a strong personal influence among the 
Puritan nobility, and was thus, both by his experience in handling 
state affairs, and his friendships, the most considerable personage 
among the Puritan commoners. The friends of the king 
attempted to make much of the threat of a Scottish invasion and 
of war with France, since it was known that the Covenanters had, 
quite in the old way, appealed to the traditional foe of England 
for help. They made no effort to deny the existence of grievances, 
but asked first for the voting of supplies, the passing of a tunnage 
and poundage bill, in order that when the country had placed 
itself on a strong footing against foreign enemies, parliament 
might at leisure consider domestic grievances. But Pym, 
seconded by Hampden, came at once to the point at issue and 
insisted that the question of grievances be settled first before a 
subsidy should be voted. Charles appealed to the Lords, and they 
voted that the subsidies ought to come first; but the Commons 



1640]' THE SHORT PARLIAMENT 667 

held to the position taken by Pym. Charles then by the advice of 
Wentworth, who knew what stuff these Commons were made of, 
proposed to give up ship money. Wentworth also advised Charles 
to ask only for a moderate subsidy. But instead Charles asked 
for nearly a million pounds to be raised by twelve different sub- 
sidies. The Commons asked Charles to give up the practice by 
which he compelled each county to furnish what was 
conduct . called "coat and conduct money" for the men whom 

illOTbCtf " 

it sent to the tield. In the bloodless war, which had 
just closed, Yorkshire alone had been compelled to furnish £40,000 
for the levies which the county had sent to Berwick. Charles 
saw that he could do nothing with his parliament, and on May 5 
decided upon a dissolution at the very moment when the Com- 
mons were about to pass another petition, virtually expressing 
their sympathy with the Scots, and calling upon the king to make 
terms with them. The fourth parliament, known in parliamentary 
history as the "Short Parliament," had sat just three weeks. 

Charles was now left to face the Scots alone; the calling of a 
parliament had only helloed to stir up English jjopular feeling and 

given strength and body to the opposition. Wentworth, 

The Scots 171 as dauntless as ever, would hear of no further conces- 
England. ' 

sion; he advised the king, therefore, to fight, to take the 
money which parliament had denied him, for, since the nation's life 
was at stake, he was "absolved from all rules of government. " He 
also offered Charles the Irish army "to reduce this kingdom;" — 
fatal words which were not forgotten. Charles hesitated to bring 

over the Irish, but he began to press troops for a second 

The Second ox i 

BisJwps' Bishops' War. He called on the people of London for 

War 1640. 

a loan, but they refused it. He applied to the courts 
of Denmark, Holland, Spain, and even the pope, for aid, but to 
little purpose. The Scots were eager for the fray and crossing the 
Tweed advanced to the Tyne where they easily scattered the half- 
hearted troops of the king, who had been stationed at jSTewburn to 
hold the passage of the river. 

It was clear enough to most men that the scheme of arbitrary 
government had now run its course. Yet both Charles and his 
council shrank from again confronting a parliament. In their 



668 EEA OF ARBITRARY GOVERNMENT [charlesI. 

dilemma they fell back nj)on the ancient expedient of summoning 
a magnum concilium instead, in the hope of securing from the 

nobles the support which they could not expect from 

maanum ^^^® representatives of the people. Charles was at York, 

sTtembcr wliither he had gone to support by his presence the 

' 28^1640"^^ men who were superintending the northern levies, and 

here the great council was to meet him on the 24th 
of September. But before the day came Charles himself had become 
satisfied that he could not avoid summoning a parliament, and at 
the opening session of the council announced the issue of writs 
for November 3. The peers nevertheless remained in session 
until October 28, and during that time performed a real service 
for the king. They raised in London upon their own security a 
loan of £50,000. They also bore no small part in securing the 
Truce of Ripon, by which the Scots were to hold Northumberland 
and Durham, until a definite peace could be concluded by the advice 
of an English parliament. Charles, also, was to allow them 
£850 a day to meet their expenses; the limit was fixed at two 
months. 

All parties were thus waiting for the assembling of Charles's 
fifth parliament. The presence of the Scottish army was a guar- 
antee that its demands should be heard. The tyranny of Charles 
I. was at an end. 



CHAPTER III 

THE LONG PARLIAMENT AND THE CIVIL WAR 

CHARLES I., 1640-1646 

The fifth and last parliament of Charles I., destined to be 

famous among English parliaments as the "Long Parliament," 

assembled on the 3d of November 1640. The elections 

The "Long ]^.^^ been Conducted in the midst of the utmost excite- 
Parhament. 

ment, Pym, Hampden, Holies, and a score of others, 
had "stumped" the counties, strengthening the faltering, rousing 
the laggards, and clearing up the doubts of the wavering. The 
character of the new House fully justified these efforts. Never had 
a House been gathered so overwhelmingly in sympathy with the 
popular cause. The great merchant class, proverbially conserv- 
ative and cautious where business interests are concerned, was 
conspicuous for its meagre representation. But country gentle- 
men and lawyers, university men the most of them, as proverbially 
radical and uncompromising when once aroused, were there in 
great numbers. As when that other famous gathering of farmers 
and lawyers met at Philadelphia one hundred and thirty-six years 
later, here was guarantee that there would be no compromise with 
tyranny, no hedging or faltering, until the great cause for which 
the people had sent their representatives to Westminster should 
be secured. And yet these men were not mere revolutionary 
theorists such as wrought such havoc among the institutions of 
Europe in French Eevolution times. No one had any thought of 
deposing Charles, much less of substituting another form of gov- 
ernment in the place of the ancient government by King, Lords, and 
Commons. Yet all were determined that the tyranny represented 
by the systems of AVentworth and Laud must come to an end. They 
proposed, moreover, to do this, not by revolution, but by refor- 
mation; not by destroying the king, but with the aid of the king; 

669 



670 THE CIVIL WAR [charlesI. 

not by making new laws or establishing new institutions, but by 
enforcing the old laws and respecting the old institutions. 

From the first the natural leader of the pojDular party in the 
House was John Pym. With him were associated John Hamp- 
..„. den, John Selden, Denzil Holies, who had helped to 

Pym" hold Speaker Finch in the chair, "William Strode who 

had recently been released from the Tower, Oliver St. John who 
had made a reputation as Hampden's lawyer in the ship money 
case, Sir Arthur Haselrig, Sir Harry A^ane, "young in years, bat 
in sage counsel old," who at twenty- one had been governor of 
Massachusetts, and last but not least, the man of few words who 
was destined to translate the speeches of Pym and Hampden into 
terms of powder and lead, the great man of the era, Oliver Crom- 
well. Of all these men, as a debater, as a leader of party, Pym 
stood easily first; and his enemies, paying unintentional tribute to 
his powers, soon dubbed him in derision "the king of the House." 

There was a prevailing belief among all parties that AYent- 

worth, now earl of Strafford, and Archbishop Laud had conspired 

to overthrow parliamentary government and restore 

TheaUacu - Catholicism. So common was the belief that neither 

upon Straf- 

fordand jt^^q^^ could count on the support of any party, and with 
remarkable unanimity the House, as the first step 
towards putting the government upon a working footing, 
appointed a commission to inquire into the conduct of the two 
ministers. For Strafford the case wore a serious aspect. The 
popular leaders knew his ability and his energy; they feared him 
and were determined on his destruction. Yet Charles implored 
Strafford to leave the army and come to London, assuring him on 
his word that he "should not suffer in his person, honor, or for- 
tune." Strafford was the last man to flinch before such a call, 
and deliberately entering the death-trap, put himself at the head 
of the council as "thorough" and dauntless as ever. Still he saw 
the danger, knew that the impeachment was coming, and proposed 
to Charles to make the treasonable correspondence of the popular 
leaders with the Scots, the basis of a counter impeachment. Pym, 
however, was too prompt for the wavering monarch and struck 
first. On November 11 on the basis of a vague charge of 



164l] ATTAINDER OF STRAFFORD 671 

treason, prepared by the Ilonse, Strafford was arrested by order 
of the Lords and committed to the Tower. On December 
18 Laud also, on motion of the same indefatigable Pym, was 
impeached of high treason, and the Lords as promptly sent him to 
the Tower. Finch, now Lord Finch, and others fled to Hol- 
land. 

The trial of Strafford began in March, but it was soon evident 
that the charge of treason could not be established. Pym had 

secured a copy of a copy ^ of the notes of the elder 
attainder of Vane, purporting to give the exact words of Strafford's 

unfortanate advice to the council at the time of the 
First Bishops' War. The fatal words as reported ran: "You 
have an army in Ireland, you may employ here to reduce this 
kingdom." But no amount of legal hocus pocus could con- 
strue the proposal to bring over the Irish army to support the 
king as treason against .the king. The Commons, however, 
were determined to have the life of the hated minister, and 
when it became evident that the prosecution was breaking 
down for lack of evidence, they resorted to a bill of attainder 
which passed by a vote of 204 to 59. The Lords hesitated, but 

Pym had unearthed a plot to which the queen, if not _ 
Ptot^'™^ Charles himself, was privy, for bringing the northern 

army to London, rescuing Strafford, and overawing tlie 
Commons. There were also rumors of the approach of a French 
force by sea, which was to meet the queen at Portsmouth and 
unite with the king's troops. Excitement in London ran high; 
the trained bands were called out; and a petition calling for the 
death of Strafford was signed by twenty thousand persons. The 
Lords yielded to the excitement and passed the bill. Only the 
king's signature now remained between the faithful minister and a 
traitor's death. Charles for a moment hesitated, and then, seek- 
ing to save his self-respect by the pitiful plea that he feared for 
the safety of his wife and children and his kingdom, gave way. 
It was not the first time that the nation had had an opportunity 

^ The original notes had been burned by order of the King, but Vane 
had first taken a copy which his son Sir Harry Vane had found among 
his papers and in turn copied and brought to Pym. 



G72 THE CIVIL WAR [chaele:! I. 

to estimate the value of a king's word.^ Strafford was beheaded on 
Tower Hill, May 12, 1641. The death of Strafford was a tribute 
to his ability. The Puritan leaders feared him more than they 
feared the king; and they destroyed him, not so much for what he 
had done, but for what he might do. 

In the six months which had elapsed since the arrest of 

Strafford several notable acts had passed the Commons.^ Early in 

the session they had recalled Prynne and his fellow 

First reforms sufferers who had tasted the justice of the Star Cham- 

of the Long i . i i • ^ 

Parliament, ber, and they now proposed to make such exercises oi 
royal power impossible in the future by abolishing the 
whole list of special courts, sweeping away in a single act the Star 
Chamber, the Council of the North, the Council of Wales, the 
Council of Lancaster, and the Council of Chester, and restoring 
thereby one-third of the people of England to the Jurisdiction of 
the common law courts. The same day, July 5, 1641 Elizabeth's 
Court of High Commission was also abolished. Lest 
The trim- ministers should be encouraged in lawlessness by the 

nial act. ° '' 

absolute control which the king held over the times for 
the calling of a parliament, it was decreed that no more than 
three years should henceforth elapse between parliaments, and 
that when assembled, a parliament must sit for at least fifty days ; 
arrangements, moreover, were made for the holding of elections 
independently of the crown, should the king refuse to issue the 
proper summons.^ Other abuses, also, were swept away. Ship 
money was declared illegal and the decision against Hampden 
reversed. Distraint of Knighthood was abolished and the forest 
commission condemned. The "Impositions," and the unauthor- 
ized levy of tunnage and poundage, suffered the same fate, and 
the unhappy collectors were made responsible for the moneys 
which they had taken from citizens in the name of the state, — a 
most wholesome lesson to law-breaking servants of the crown in 
the future. Parliament then sought to strengthen the law courts 



> Lee, Source Book, pp. 357, 358. 

2 Gardiner, Const. Docs., pp. 106-122. 

^Gardiner, Const. Docs., pp. 74-84. 



164lJ REVOLUTIONARY DRIFT 673 

by decreeing that the judges should hold office during good 
behavior and not be liable to removal at the king's pleasure. 

Thus far the efforts of the Long Parliament had not been 
revolutionary. They had simply attacked the prerogatives which 

the Stuarts had derived from precedents left by the 
arv'drift^f Tudors and struck them off one by one, until they had 
Parkament shattered the whole Tudor structure and leveled it with 

the dust. But the witless intrigue of the queen in the 
Army Plot, which had turned all London upside down, had deeply 
stirred parliament; under the intense excitement its work began 
to assume a new character, and parliament itself began to change 
from a body of dignified and sober reformers into a gathering of 
feverish revolutionists. The precipitation of the attainder of 
Strafford was the first symptom of this change. More significant 
still, on the day when Charles put his name to the bill of 
attainder, he was also compelled to sign another bill which 
decreed that the existing parliament should not be dissolved with- 
out its own consent. The revolutionary purport of this measure 
at the time was perhaps not observed; the promoters thought only 
of preventing the king from carrying out his part of the Army 
Plot. Yet parliament had really taken from the king the consti- 
tutional right of appeal to the nation, and left him henceforth no 
means of getting rid of a refractory parliament other than civil 
war. They had shorn the king of the one method of controlling 
parliaments, which by the laws was unquestionably his, and legis- 
lated themselves into power by his side as an independent olig- 
archy. As long as the nation supported the parliament, and the 
king remained without a party, the full significance of the act 
would not appear; but let the king once secure a considerable 
party in the nation, civil war would be inevitable. 

For the moment, however, no one saw the shadow. The nation 
was overwhelmingly with the parliament; and parliament had acted 

thus far virtually as a unit. When a minority had 
partieT^'^''^ spokeu, as in the opposition to the attainder of 

Strafford, the disagreement had been not upon the 
principle, but upon the question of the best method of procedure. 
The parliament was satisfied with its work, confident in its 



674 THE CIVIL WAR [chaeles I. 

strength, and had no wish to interfere with the king farther. 
It voted tnnnage and poundage, and arranged for a poll tax, 
graduated from £100 to 6d, In August the claims of the Scots 
were also satisfied, their army sent home, and the English army 
disbanded. 

The political questions apparently were now settled; the king- 
was still without a party, and probably would have remained so, had 
not the unwise zeal of some radical Puritans thrust the 

Tyf/'V'is'iO')!' of 

thepartyof religious question to the front and given it a new 
prominence. Laud and men, who had acted with him, 
like Mainwaring, had forfeited all consideration on the part of 
parliament, and the disposition to depose and punish them was 
practically unanimous. But many members, distinguishing 
between the incumbent bishops and the Episcopacy, and sincerely 
attacbed to the system established by Elizabeth, did not wish to 
go farther. To many others, however, the system of Episcopacy 
was so closely associated with the tyranny which they were seek- 
ing to overthrow, the support, which convocation had given tlie 
crown both by its money grants and its teachings, so marked, that 
there seemed to be no middle ground. In London especially, 
hostility to the Episcopacy ran so high that a petition for complete 
abolition, known as the "Eoot and Branch Petition,"^ received 
fifteen thousand signatures, and in response to this petition, on May 
27, 1041, Sir Edward Dering presented in parliament 
Th6"Root the "Root and Branch Bill." The unanimity which 
BUI," 1641. had prevailed heretofore was at once threatened. Falk- 
land, Digby, Hyde, and Selden, drew off from their old 
companions, and made so brave a fight, that the bill had not 
reached its final stages when the session closed in September. 

Outside of parliament also the waves of controversy were beat- 
ing high. The people were flooded with tracts for and against 
the episcopal forms. Bishop Hall of Exeter published 

The tract ^ ' ' Humble Remonstrance" addressed to parliament, and 
■war. _ . . 

five Puritan clergymen answered him in a tract remark- 
able, not so much for its contents, as for the curious pseudonym, 
"Smectymnuus", which they attached, made up of their several 

'Gardiner, Const. Docs., pp. 67-74. 



164l] THE IN^CIDENT 675 

initials. Prominent among those who took part in this tract war, 
was John Milton, who in ponderous but sonorous prose denounced 
the bishops and made Episcopacy responsible for all the failures 
of the Reformation. The result of this unfortunate strife was to 
divide the ranks of the reformers and give ecclesiastical questions 
a prominence over the questions of constitutional reform, which 
they did not deserve. 

Charles, in the meanwhile, had gone to Scotland in the hope 
of securing the support -of his Scottish subjects, by granting the 

demands which he had before resisted to the point of 
Scotland^ War. But his court was still the center of intrigue, and 
dmt^^ioi'i '^^^ unfortunate affair, known as the "Incident," a plan, 

formed like the Army Plot by some hot-headed courtiers, 
for securing and possibly destroying the popular leaders in the lato 
troubles in the northern kingdom, completely defeated the jjur- 
pose of the king. Yet he v;ould not give up the idea of getting 
aid from Scotland and made Leslie, the leader of the Scots in the 
Bishops' Wars, Earl of Leven ; others he honored in similar 
ways. He was not unaAvare, also, of the significance of the quarrel 
of his enemies at home over the church question, and sought to 
add fuel to the flame by seudiug a declaration to the English 
Lords, "that he was resolved, by the grace of God, to die in the 
maiuteuance of the discipliue and doctriue of the Church of Eng- 
land, as established by Elizabeth." 

Parliament now began to realize the mistake of raising the 
religious question. Since the death of Strafford, Charles had 

done little to regain confidence; his actions in Scotland 
nr'anch%iii ^cre regarded with positive suspicion. The Root and 
dnrppcd, Branch Bill was therefore abandoned for the present, 

and arrangements were made for storing the arms of 
the northern army at Hull and guarding the Tower of London. 
A quieting appeal also was issued to the people, asking them to 
withhold action and wait for parliament to mature its plans for 
the reformation of the church. A sort of committee of safety 
was appointed with Pym at the head, to remain in Loudon and 
keep watch of the drift of affairs. Then, on September 9, parlia- 
ment adjourned until October 20. 



676 THE CIVIL WAR [charles I. 

When parliament met again, it had hardly begun the busi- 
ness of the session when most disquieting news reached it from 
Ireland. The successors of Strafford had pushed for- 
ThcirKh ward his scheme of colonizing Connaught and were in 
full sympathy with the plan of crushing the Catholics. 
But Charles had been intriguing with the Catholic lords, and, by 
conceding all that the Irish parliament demanded, was seeking 
here, as in Scotland, to get support for an armed interference in 
England. As a result of this encouragement the parliament and 
people of Ireland soon passed beyond the control of the authorized 
deputies of the king, and on October 23 the whole north broke out 
in revolt. Everywhere the English settlers were taken by surprise 
and driven from their homes with great suffering. The rebels had 
rejected a proposal of wholesale massacre; but the wrongs of the 
Celtic population were many, the religious hatred was intense, and, 
when once the people saw their oppressors fleeing for their lives, 
their homes in flames, the temptation to acts of barbaric ferocity 
was too great to be resisted. 

This was the news which reached the English parliament soon 
after the opening of the new session, yet it knew not how to 
TheGraid ^^^' ^^ ^^^^ afraid to entrust the king with an army, 
^tr'nce No ^^^^ ^^® should make common cause with the Irish for 
vembcr, 1641. the suppression of the liberties of England. It was 
decided, therefore, to ask the Scots to send a force equal to what 
might be raised in England in order to counterbalance the army 
which parliament was compelled to raise but which it feared would 
pass into the king's hands. To Pym, Hampden, and other radical 
leaders, moreover, with the Irish revolt confronting them, with 
disquieting rumors of the king's perfidy coming from Scotland, 
and the increasing strength of the party of reaction in the Houses, 
it seemed necessary, if what had been won was to be saved, not to 
allow the king to obscure, or the nation to forget, the real ground 
upon which the quarrel had been begun. In Kovember 1641, 
therefore, they brought before the House a monster document of 
two hundred and six clauses, known as the Grand Remonstrance. 

This document was designed primarily as an appeal to the 
nation. It was in reality a vigorous arraignment of the king and 



164l] THE GRAND REMONSTRANCE 677 

defense of the parliament, accusing the king's councillors and the 
bishops of deliberately attempting to overthrow the laws of the 
kingdom and restore the papacy. It proposed, moreover, for the 
fiitare that the royal councillors should be named in accordance 
with the wishes of parliament; and that a convention or assembly 
of Protestant divines, both English and foreign, be called together 
"to consider all things necessary for the peace and good govern- 
ment of the churches;" the results of the work of the ecclesiastical 
assembly were to be confirmed by parliament and thus made the 
law of the land.'' 

Such a measure, proposed at such a time, could have but one 
result; it at once completed the division in the ranks of the parlia- 
mentary party which had been threatened by the agita- 

Breali in the j i. j ^ ^ a ^ 

pariiamen- tion ovcr the Eoot and Branch Bill of the preceding 
session. Reconciliation was henceforth impossible. 
The new Episcopal party gathered its strength for the issue, and the 
struggle began. On the 22d of November the battle opened at 
noon and waged until the falling shadows of a bleak November day 
com]Delled the ushers to bring in candles ; afternoon passed into 
evening; still the debate thundered on. At midnight the Remon- 
strance was carried by a majority of eleven votes in a house of 
307 members. But so evenly were the two parties balanced, 
that when a motion was made by the victors to print, that is 
virtually to send out the appeal to the nation, the minority 
returned to the conflict and the storm broke out again with 
greater fury than ever. So intense was the excitement, that at 
times twenty members were on their feet at once, shouting and 
waving hats and swords like madmen. Finally at four o'clock of 
the morning of the 23d, all disputed points were^^vaived by an 
adjournment,^ and this memorable session of the Long Parliament 
closed. "The Civil War was all the nearer for that night's work. " 
Two days later the king returned to London. The reaction had 
been gaining ground rapidly. The wealthier citizens of London 
were restless under the heavy taxation which parliament had 

^ For this remai'kable document and the king's reply, see Gardiner 
Const. Docs., pp. 127-158. 

^ The motion to print was not carried until Dee. 15. 



678 THE CIVIL WAR [charlesI. 

recently imposed upon them, and Episcopalians everywhere saw a 

threat of persecution in the program laid down by the Grand Ee- 

moustrance. On the 1st of December the lengthy doc- 

Chariesin nment was presented to the king and on the 23d he re- 
London. . 

turned an answer, in which he acknowledged nothing and 
granted nothing. In the meanwhile Charles had sought to assure 
the opposition by renewing his pledge to govern according to law, 
and maintain the church of Elizabeth and King James. But even 
the king's friends could hardly take his jsromises seriously when 
he continued to belie them in his acts. He placed his guard 
around the Parliament House under the command of Dorset, and 
December 23, the day of his reply to the Grand Remonstrance, 
dismissed Balfour, the lieutenant of the Tower who had refused 
to allow Strafford to escape, appointing in his place Lunsford, a 
notorious bully. The excitement at Westminster, therefore, was 
not allayed; in the palace yard collisions were frequent between 
the king's guard and mobs of Puritan sympathizers, who 
swarmed there whenever the cry was raised that parliament was in 
danger. So great was the excitement that Charles was compelled 
at last to remove Dorset's guard and turn the safe keeping of 
parliament over to the magistrates of Westminster. Lunsford also 
was soon after removed from th.e command of the Tower. 

The Grand Remonstrance had now drawn the lines sharply in 
the House. The majority of the Root and Branch reformers was 

small, but it was determined and could be depended 
corZ^ufthe °^- ^^larles, however, still controlled the Lords by 
cemhermi ^^^^^^^ ^^ ^^^® hishops, whosc solid vote would always 

give him a working majority with which to defeat any 
hostile measure which might pass the House. But in the pres- 
ence of the boisterous mobs which daily surged about the Parlia- 
ment House, blocking the ways and preventing egress or ingress, 
the courage of the men of peace failed them, and, pleading that 
their lives were in danger, they refused longer to attend the sit- 
tings of parliament. On the 29th of December twelve bishops, 
headed by Williams, the recently made archbishop of York, 
formally protested against the legality of all proceedings under- 
taken during their absence. To their surprise their protest was 



1641] THE FIVE MEMBERS 679 

answered by an impeachment; tbe Lords sustained the impeach- 
ment and the seats were vacated. With Williams and his 
fellow bishops in the Tower, the Upper House passed permanently 
iinder the control of the opposition. 

The king was now desperate; he could no longer dissolve 
parliament at will; the withdrawal of the bishops had deprived 
,„, .,^ him of the last means of checking the Commons in a 

The ''five => 

memhersr constitutional manner. Still he vacillated. He 

Januarij, 

^^'^^- sought to win Pym by offering him the chancellorship 

of the exchequer, but two hours later gave the office to Culpepper; 
Falkland, who had headed the opposition to the Root and Branch 
faction in parliament, he made Secretary of State. To add to his 
disquiet, the king learned that the Commons were considering a 
plan for impeaching the queen for treason. Her danger was real ; 
no one knew how many of the facts connected with her intrigue 
with the pope, with the leaders in the Army Plot or with the Irish 
rebels, were in the hands of Pym and Hampden. Urged at last 
by the imminence of the crisis, Charles determined to save the 
queen by striking first, and on the 3d of January, 1642, impeached 
Lord Kimbolton and five members of the House, Pym, Hampden, 
Holies, Haselrig, and Strode, "for having traitorously invited a 
foreign power (the Scots) to invade England." The right of the 
king to impeach a member of the House was by no means clear, 
and the Commons paid no attention to the demand of the king for 
the delivery of the five members. The morning passed and noth- 
ing was done; then about three in the afternoon, after the king 
had given every opportunity for the five marked men to get out 
of his way, he led a noisy throng of armed men through the 
streets to the House and demanded the five members. Advancing 
to the Speaker's chair, he turned and looked about the room. 
He was not a coward. He had left his escort without and he stood 
there alone facing the Commons. "Where are they?" he asked 
Speaker Lenthall. But Lenthall, assuming the position of 
respect in the presence of majesty which convention prescribed, 
firmly but respectfully refused to use "eye or tongue," save as 
the House should direct him. Again Charles looked the silent 
House in the face and then retired, baffled, beaten. It was the 



680 THE CIVIL WAE [charlks I. 

falsest of all the false steps which he had yet taken during the 
eighteen years of his reign. As he turned to leave the House, 
the ominous silence was broken. Cries of "Privilege!" "Priv- 
ilege!" attended him into the lobby. The House rose in tumult and 
followed the five members into the city, where the sympathy of 
the people promised them protection. Charles, however, was for 
once overawed ; and not knowing what the Commons might do in 
their desperation, or where they might attempt to strike next, on 
the 10th of January he retired to Hampden Court, abandoning 
his capital and the resources of the state to the parliament. On 
the 11th the Commons returned in triumph to Westminster. 

War was now certain unless the king should yield at all points. 
The radical majority of the parliament had triumphed and pro- 
ceeded at once to secure its triumph by assuming 
mii^^^^^^"' control of the military resources of the government. 
It first sent a bill to the king which "disabled all 
persons in holy orders from exercising any temporal jurisdiction or 
authority." Charles, possibly hoping that this Avould quiet the 
waters, consented; thus agreeing to the permanent exclusion of 
the bishops from the Lords. But the House was not satisfied, 
and next sent him a Militia Bill, which called upon him to sur- 
render to parliament the entire control of the militia, the only 
armed force in the kingdom, by allowing parliament to appoint its 
officers. The king, however, would go no farther. "No, not for 
an hour!" was his angry answer. The House then 
Ord^ance^ determined to abandon the form of a bill and push 
through the measure as an ordinance of parliament, 
that is to enforce it without the king's consent. This of course 
was revolution, pure and simple, and on the king's part there could 
be only one reply. He had already sent his wife and children out 
of the kingdom, and on August 22, he raised the royal standard 
at Nottingham. It was the sign that civil war had begun. 

The war which was now to desolate England for ten years is 
known in English History as the "Great Rebellion" or the 
"Great Civil War. " Sometimes taken with the stirring events of 
the epoch which precedes and the epoch which follows, it is called 
the "Puritan Revolution." The name is not inapt, for a religious 



164l] ISSUES OF THE WAK 681 

purpose was quite as prominent in the minds of the contending 

parties as a civil purpose. The fears of a restoration of the papacy, 

which pursued the Puritans, were so mixed up in 

war^ml their minds with a desire to secure the civil rights which 

reiigiom j^j^g j^i^p- had violated, that they looked upon themselves 

issue. *5 ■> J L- 

as fighting for Protestantism fully as much as for 
political liberty. The lovers of the Prayer Book and l^^piscopacy, 
on the other hand, although they mistrusted Charles and con- 
demned his past tyrannies, believed that they must support him or 
be prepared to accept any restrictive laws which the Puritans 
might see fit to impose. For the same reason the entire body 
of English Catholics, who were certain to be persecuted if the 
Puritans were allowed to rule the state, although they had no rea- 
son to expect much from the Episcopal party, thought it safer to 
take their stand with them and support the king. But all Puritans 
of whatever stripe, Presbyterians, Independents, Separatists, 
Brownists, or Anaba|)tists, men who believed in Koot and Branch 
measures, the great mass of the "God fearing" yeomanry, the 
tradesmen of the towns, rallied to the support of the parliament. 
Thus the religious lines were distinctly drawn. The political 
issue, however, though confused with the religious in the minds 

of most, was by no means lost sight of. Here too the 
ii^ue'^^The'^ radical leaders in parliament had left no middle ground 
iiU<!iiF''"^"' ^^^' ^^^y subject of the king. On the 2d of June they 

had sent to Charles at York nineteen propositions, in 
which they demanded that they be allowed to name the king's council, 
his officers of state, his lieutenants of fortresses, and his judges; 
that he confirm the Militia Ordinance and permit them to reform 
the church in accordance with their ideas; that is, parliament 
virtually asked the king to surrender what was left of royal 
authority, leaving him little more than the name and dignity of 
king. Now there were many men, especially among the nobility, 
who, while they had no sympathy with the methods of Laud or the 
Court of Star Chamber, and had voted steadily with the majority 
for the long list of abolitions in tlie first session of the Long Parlia-' 
ment, wliile they had little belief in Charles personally and had 
even voted for the attainder of A¥entworth, yet loved the king- 



682 THE CIVIL WAR [chaeles I. 

ship with a great and patriotic love, as the symbol of the unity and 
strength of the nation, and, with no feigned alarm, now beheld the 
Puritan leaders bent apparently upon humiliating the crown to 
the dust. Charles had made concessions, and these men, among 
whom were' Hyde and Falkland, believed that he had gone far 
enough. They had made a brave fight against the Eoot and 
Branch Bill, and again against the Grand Remonstrance, and they 
now knew that the time for debate had passed. When, therefore, 
Charles raised his standard in August, these men, including a 
fnll majority of the Lords, were ranged at his side. 

The social lines which divided the two camps were by no means 

so clearly drawn. The rufflers, the thorough-going courtiers, 

soldiers of fortnne many of them, and, like the king's 

Thcmciai nephews Prince Rupert and Prince Maurice, of noble 

issue. '- J- ' 

blood, the gay worldlings of the court who hated 
Puritanism and despised Puritans by instinct and by training, 
and who cared not a straw for the princijjles of religion or liberty, 
were to be counted for the king. And yet it would be an error to 
represent the struggle as a war of classes. There was no distinct 
appeal to rival social elements as in the later French Revolntion ; 
and, although the majority of the nobility and the gentry were 
M'ith the king, these classes were also well rej)resented on the other 
side; their representatives furnished the generals and statesmen, 
who were to conduct the counsels of the parliamentary canse to a 
triumphant issue. 

Geographically, also, the lines weie nowhere distinctly drawn. 
London was the stronghold of the Puritans, and York of the king. 

The sonth and east were overwhelmingly for the par- 

Gengraph- liament. The north and west including Wales were 
ical lines. ° 

for the king. And yet during the war, there was more 
or less fighting and bloodshed in almost every county in the king- 
dom. All in all, however, geographically the advantage was with 
the parliament. It controlled the most opnlent and populous 
counties and thus readily found men and money for its armies. 
It controlled the great seaport populations of the south, and thus 
not only carried with it the fleet, but also was able to recruit its 
strength as more ships or seamen were needed. It could also 



1642] DEIFTING INTO WAR 683 

guard the coasts, prevent the king from getting supplies by sea, 
while it transported its troops at will, and threw them into any 
seaport town threatened by the land forces of the king. 

For three months previous to the setting up of the royal 
standard the country had been steadily drifting into war. In 

April Charles had attempted to get possession of the 
Mo war gi'sat arseuals of Hull, but Hotham, the parliamentary 

governor, had refused him admission, and the military 
stores consisting of a complete equipment for sixteen thousand 
men were brought to London. In the first week of July, parlia- 
ment had appointed a Committee of Safety, of which the prominent 
members were the two Puritan nobles, Essex and Saye and Sele, 
and the Commoners, Pym, Hampden, Holies, and Waller; ten 
thousand men, also, were levied for immediate service and Essex 
appointed commauder-in-chief. On 1he loth blood was shed at 
Manchester, where Lord Strange had undertaken to interfere with 
some townsmen who were attempting to carry out the Militia 
Ordinance. Eour days before, the House had already declared 
Charles responsible for beginning war; and on the 18th of August 
they had further declared those who supported the king, traitors. 
During all this time there had been more or less pretense of 
negotiation, but parliament had little confidence in the result, and 

had continued to push forward its preparations for 
September^' arm.ed resistaiice. Kimbolton, Hampden, Holies, and 
^^^' others, raised regiments at their own expense. The 

eastern counties formed an alliance to defend parliament, known as 
the Eastern Association. London, also, raised eight thousand men 
and put them in the field. On September 6 the last lingering 
hope of averting the conflict by negotiation was abandoned, and on 
the 7th the royal governor. Goring surrendered Portsmouth and 
all its stores to Sir William Waller, a member of the Committee 
of Safety. Parliament now had twenty thousand men under its 
orders and, two days after the capture of Portsmouth, sent Essex 
forward with the purpose of immediately attacking the king at 
Nottingham. 

Charles, however, had no thought of risking all upon a single 
encounter at this stage of the conflict; the levies from Wales and 



684 



THE CIVIL WAR 



I Charles I. 



the northern counties, moreover, had not yet joined him. lie had 
therefore retired towards Shrewsbury on the 7th. Essex followed 
him, throwing garrisons into Northampton, Coventry, 
paigT(^ and Warwick, and took up a station at Worcester, where, 
Ed4)ehiii. ^ short time before, the first serious encounter of 
the war had already taken place in which Euperfs horse had 
easily scattered one of the newly-raised cavalry regiments of the 
parliament. By the 12th of October the king's western and 
northern levies had reached him, and with fourteen thousand men 
he thought himself strong enough to begin the march upon Lon- 




Battle 



Parliamentary Army King s Army, 

I I Worse Horse IBB 

L 1 Foot Foot 



don. Essex hurried after with a slightly inferior force, and on the 
22d of October found the king in a strong position on Edgehill. 
On the afternoon of Sunday the 23d the king led his army down 
from the hill to meet his foes. Rupert again easily routed the 
Puritan horse, but the Puritan infantry held their own, and when 
at dusk Rupert returned from the pursuit he found the king's 
men withdrawing to Edgehill. The battle, however, was inde- 
cisive, for the complete demoralization of Essex's cavalry compelled 
him to retire to Warwick the next day, while the king's army once 
more resumed its march, passing through Oxford and Reading. 
Yet his movements were so slow that Essex was not only able to 



1642, 1643] CAMPAIGN OF EDGEHILL 685 

follow him again, but reached a strong position on his flank at 
Kingston. Charles, however, did not care to try the mettle of the 
sturdy Puritan infantry a second time, and instead of turning 
aside to measure swords with Essex, pushed straight on to Lon- 
don. At Brentford, eight miles from Westminster, Eupert again 
scattered the Puritan horse, but two miles farther, at Tnrnham 
Green, the king found the trained bands of London drawn up in 
dense masses across his path. With Essex so near he feared to 
chance a battle and, after a useless cannonade, retired to Oxford. 
Here he established his headquarters for the rest of the war, set- 
ting up a government and, January 1644, calling together a royalist 
parliament, composed mostly of the members of the Long Parlia- 
ment who had fled from Westminster. 

Thus ended the first campaign of the war. It had been inde- 
cisive and left matters about where they stood on September 7. 
It had revealed to Charles, howevei", the determined 
campaign spirit of the men who defied him; it had also revealed 
of 1642. ^^ ^j^g Puritan leaders the immense superiority of the 

royalist horse. During the winter the two armies of Essex and 
Charles faced each other between Oxford and London, but nothing 
was done. There were also some futile attempts at negotiation, 
but no revival of confidence, due partly to the continued efl'orts of 
Charles to get troops over from Ireland, and also to his efPorts to 
sow dissensions among the parliamentary leaders. 

As the spring came on fighting began all over England. In 

the main it went against the parliament. Some petty victories of 

the early year were more than offset by later losses. 

Thecam- Essex took Reading but hesitated to advance on Oxford. 
paign of i643. o 

On the 16th of May Sir Ralph Hopton defeated the 
earl of Stamford at Stratton and secured Cornwall for the king. 
On the 18th of June Hampden received his death wound at Chal- 
grove Field, in a futile attempt to cut off a band of raiders under 
Prince Rupert; "a gallant man, an honest man, an able man, and 
second to none living." On the 30th of June William Cavendish 
Earl of Newcastle defeated Lord Fairfax at Adwalton Moor, a vic- 
tory which left Hull, already closely besieged, the only parliamen- 
tary stronghold in Yorkshire. On the 5th of July and again on 



686 THE CIVIL WAR [charles I. 

the 13th, Hopton, the victor of Stratton, defeated Waller, who had 
been holding the Severn valley in order to prevent the Welsh from 
reinforcing the king at Oxford, and on the 26th Eupert took 
Bristol. 

Charles now proposed that Newcastle and Hopton bring their 
victorious armies and join with him for a march on London. But 
the Cornish men wonld not leave their homes to the 
Gloucester, mercy of the powerful garrisons of Plymouth and 
Exeter; the Yorkshire men were as unwilling to march 
south until Hull had been reduced. The garrison of Gloucester, 
also, held the bridge over the lower Severn, and the Welshmen 
would not march to London until the town had been taken. 
Charles, therefore, contrary to his better Judgment, was compelled 
to engage in a series of sieges against cities for the most part with 
an open seaboard. Prince Maurice, Rupert's youuger brother, was 
sent against Plymouth and Exeter; Newcastle pressed the siege of 
Hull; while the king with his main army marched upon Glouces- 
ter. Pym called upon London for an army to relieve Gloucester, 
and the trained bands promptly responded, giving him an army of 
fifteen thousand men. Rupert's cavalry failed to check the advance 
and on September 8 Essex marched into the city. From the 
first the Puritans had felt a deep sense of dependence upon God; 
they were fighting his battles; "God had called them to do the 
work." The timely arrival of Essex, therefore, when only three 
barrels of gunpowder were left in the city, was looked upon as a 
special interposition of Providence, and the grateful citizens in- 
scribed above the gate, "A city assaulted by men but saved by 
God." 

It was the crisis of the war. The relief of Gloucester saved Ply- 
mouth and Hull, possibly London also; for had these cities fallen, 
in all probability London could not have resisted the 

The crisis -t -^ 

passed. combined force which the king would then have con- 

centrated on the lower Thames. 

Charles now mano3uvred to prevent the return of Essex to Lon- 
don ; the result was the first battle of Newbury, fought on the 
20th of September, twenty-seven miles from Oxford. The foot 
wrestled for hours from hedgerow to hedgerow, Rupert's cavalry 



1643] OLIVEE CROMWELL 687 

as usual scattered the Puritan horse. He then turned upon the 
Londoners, but for once his terrible cavalry had found a foe 
First battle worthy of their mettle. When niglit came the Puri- 
fe^ember'^' tan infantry still held their ground. They had lost 
20, 1643, heavily but the king's losses were greater, among them 

the gallant Lord Falkland. The king withdrew to Oxford, leav- 
ing the way open to London. 

The triumph at Newbury of the Puritans, or "Roundheads," as 
the gay "Cavaliers" of Rupert had begun to call them, was fol- 
lowed three weeks later by a successful sortie of the 

TviuynxiTis of 

Puritans in garrison of Hull, which compelled Newcastle to raise 
the North. 

the siege. On the same day, the 11th of October, Kim- 

bolton, recently become earl of Manchester, won a decisive victory 
at Winceby. This battle is famous as the first to bring Oliver 
Cromwell into prominence. 

This remarkable man, destined to be the great man of the cen- 
tury, a quiet, unobtrusive squire of Huntingdonshire, had been 

sent up to the Long Parliament from Cambridge bor- 
Oromweii ^ugh, having already appeared at Westminster in 1628 

and again in the Short Parliament in 1640. He was 
not a talker; and although he had supported Hampden and Pym 
steadily in the voting, his position as a member of the Long Parlia- 
ment had not been prominent. But when the time for action 
came, he went down to his home to take part in the organization 
of the Eastern Association. Although a cousin of Hampden and a 
member of parliament, he sought for himself no higher position in 
the army than that of a single captain of cavalry. He was present 
at Edgehill and had managed to hold his troop together, one of the 
few cavalry companies that did not flee at the first charge of the 
cavaliers. He saw, moreover, the reason of the worthlessness of 
the Puritan horse. "Your troops" he said to Hampden "are 
most of them decayed serving men and tapsters, and such kind of 
fellows, and their troops are gentlemen's sons and persons of 
quality. Do you think that the spirits of such base and mean 
fellows will ever be able to encounter gentlemen that have honor, 
courage, and resolution in them?" In the months following Edge- 
hill Cromwell had returned to his home and there brought together 



G88 THE CIVIL WAR [charles I. 

a cavalry regiment of a very different mettle. As he himself 
expressed it, he proposed to match "men of religion," against the 
"king's gentlemen of honor." The result was the organization 
of the famous "Ironsides;" a body of men who possessed the 
loftiest religious enthusiasm, tempered and hardened by the 
severest discipline. At Winceby, Cromwell and his famous regi- 
ment led the van of Manchester's army. From this time he and 
his men are conspicuous figures in the war; equal to Rupert's 
terrible cavaliers "in dash and daring," and more than equal in 
drill and self-restraint. 

In December the parliament sustained a serious loss in the 
death of Pym, who had become the virtual leader of the adminis- 
tration but had succumbed to the anxieties and burdens 
LecHiueand of his position, laying his life on the altar of English 

Covenant " x ' ./ o o 

liberty as surely as Eliot or Hampden. As his last 
service he had secured the formal alliance of the parliament 
with the Scots in the "Solemn League and Covenant," by which 
the English bound themselves to support a Scottish army in Eng- 
land, and to reform the Church of England "according to the 
example of the best reformed churches," — a jihrase understood bj^ 
the Scots to mean the Presbyterian Church. Vane, however, who 
hated intolerance and saw clearly that ^^new presbyter" was "only 
old priest writ large," insisted on adding the clause "and according 
to the Word of God." This was a mere subterfuge, adopted in 
order to leave the whole matter open, since the "Word of God" 
when consulted by Independents would not favor the Presbyterian 
system. The Scots, however, apprehended no difficulty because 
the Presbyterian party in England was much larger than the Inde- 
pendent party, and an assembly of Presbyterian divines had 
already met at Westminster in July, 1643, and were busily engaged 
in making a plan for the reform of the English Church on a 
Presbyterian basis. 

Charles also in the meanwhile had been seeking allies, and in 
September had entered into a preliminary truce with the Irish, 
known as the Cessation of Arms. Thus the king was in the pop- 
ular mind more than ever allied with the cause of the supporters 
of the pope; while the Solemn League and Covenant also helped 



1644] 



MAKSTON MOOR 



689 



to strengthen the common belief that the struggle was for Prot- 
estantism against "popery, prelacy, superstition, heresy, schism, 
and profaneness. " The Irish truce, however, brought 
very little advantage. It released the English army 
which had been stationed in Ireland, but the troops had 
hardly reached England when they were routed by Fair- 
fax at Nantwich, and the majority of the survivors at once took 
service under the parliament. 



Charles and 
the l7-ish 

alliance. 
The Cessa- 
tion of Ai'ms. 




On the 19th of January the Scots under David Leslie crossed 
the border twenty thousand strong, and uniting v>^ith Fairfax, suc- 
ceeded in shutting up in York Newcastle and the 
Moor^^Juhj army with which he had swept Yorkshire the year 
2,1644. before. In April they were joined by Manchester with 

the army of the Eastern Association. Charles fully realized 
the importance of saving Newcastle, and accordingly ordered 
Kupert to raise an army and advance to his relief. On the 30th 
of June Eupert and his troopers reached Knaresborough on the 
Mdd. When the allies heard of his approach they raised the 
siege of York and, advancing across Marston Moor, took up their 
station at Skip Bridge, a short distance below Knaresborough. 



690 THE CIVIL WAE [cHARtEs i. 

But Eupert by a hasty flank march, passing the Swale at Thorn- 
ton Bridge, gained the left bank of the Ouse, entered the city, and 
joined Newcastle before the allies could stop him. It was a mas- 
terly movement. York was saved and the king's cause was once 
more in the ascendant. Eupert, however, who now commanded 
both royalist armies, was determined to fight, and leading out the 
combined forces, faced tlie allies on Marston Moor. When 

Eupert had completed his formation, the day was done, 
July 2. tmd, as the enemy were apparently quiet and determined 

to act on the defensive, he decided to postpone the 
battle until the morning; ranks were broken and supper was 
ordered. The enemy, however, watchful and alert, looking down 
upon the camp of Eupert from the higher ground which they had 
held since morning, and divining his change of plan, decided to 
seize the moment of inattention and attack at once. On the left 
wing Cromwell's horse supported by Leslie, for the first time met 
the famous cavaliers of Eupert and after a stubborn contest proved 
their superiority by driving them from the field. On the right wing, 
however, the Fairfaxes were beaten by Goring. The Scots in the 
center were also beginning to give way; when Cromwell, keeping his 
men well in hand, returned from the pursuit of Eupert, and at once 
attacked Goring and drove him from the field; then rallying 
Fairfax's men he came to the relief of the Scots. This movement 
decided the day. Newcastle's infantry fought desperately; some 
regiments perished to a man, but they were unsupported and 
heroism could not save them. Newcastle fled to Flanders. 
Eupert with his shattered cavalry succeeded in getting back to the 
Severn. The allies had won the first decisive engagement of the 
war; the north now passed into their hands. 

In the south affairs were not going so well for the parliament. 
"While Leslie and Fairfax were besieging Newcastle in York, Waller 

had marched out of London at the head of the trained 
campaign"^ bands, intending to unite with Essex for a joint attack 
of 1644. upon the king at Oxford. When they learned, how- 

ever, that Charles had slipped away into Worcestershire, it was 
determined to leave Waller to carry on the siege, while Essex 
marched into the southwest. Charles saw his advantage, and at 



1644] LOSTWITHIEL 691 

once turning upon Waller, beat him at Cropredy Bridge and so 
discouraged his raw levies, that they retired to London. Charles 

then hurried after Essex and surrounded him at Lost- 
Lostivithiei ^yithiel. The foot were compelled to surrender; the 

cavalry cut their way through to Plymouth; Essex 
made his escape to London by sea. 

Thus the reverses of Charles in the north were offset somewhat 
by his successes in the south. If he had lost an army at Marston 

Moor, the Puritans had lost an army at Lostwithiel. 
Results of 11 }^Q ly^d iQgt the northern counties, the Puritans had 

1644. ' 

lost the western counties. Leslie might have led his 
Scots into southern England and more than made good the loss of 
Essex's infantry, but the royalist earl of Montrose was creating 
such a diversion in Scotland that Leslie dared not pass the Humber 
when he might soon be needed beyond the Tweed to save the Low- 
lands. 

The parliamentary leaders, while thus unable to concentrate 
their forces and take advantage of their great victory at Marston 
Moor, were also divided among themselves as to the 
amongthe ultimate object of the war. The conduct of the war 
tary^iead^rs. l^^d been entrusted to a joint committee of both king- 
doms. The committee, however,- was large and 
unwieldy, and seriously divided upon ecclesiastical questions but 
more seriously upon the final issues of the war. The Presby- 
terians at heart were royalists and desired only to bring the king 
to terms. The Puritan nobles, moreover, were thoroughly alarmed 
at the democratic tendencies which the war was developing, and 
did not wish to crush the king altogether, lest the rising tide of 
revolution sweep away their privileges as well in the overthrow of 
the monarchy. The Independents, however, had no sympathy 
with the lingering royalist sentiment of their allies, and, while they 
had not yet advanced so far as to desire the destruction of the 
king, much less the monarchy, saw clearly that their lives or their 
property could be secure, only after they had completely crushed 
the last vestige of royalist military power and restored peace to the 
nation upon their own terms. 

These dissensions were soon to bear fruit on the field of battle. 



692 THE CIVIL WAR [chari,es I, 

After Marston Moor, Manchester and Cromwell, leaving Fairfax 
with the Scots to reduce Pomfret and Newcastle-on-Tyne and 
The second watcli the progress of affairs in Scotland, had marched 
mwhw-y. south to prevent the return of Charles from the west 
^romuiiiand and protect Lor. don. They met Charles at Newbury 
Manchester. ^^^ October. The Puritan army was greatly superior, 
and only the unwillingness of Manchester to crush Charles alto- 
gether, prevented Cromwell and Waller from repeating the triumph 
of Marston Moor. The inertness of Manchester at once brought 
the quarrel of Independents and Presbyterians to a head. Crom- 
well brought charges agaiiist Manchester in the House, and Man- 
chester replied by preferring counter charges against Cromwell. 
The quarrel rapidly developed into a struggle to get possession of 
the army. 

In this struggle the Presbyterian majority apparently had their 
own way at first, and on November 24, parliament sent to the king 

at Oxford a series of twenty propositions to serve as a 
atuj-hridge, basis for negotiation. On January 30, the negotiations 

were formally opened at Uxbridge, and continued for 
three weeks. They failed, however, chiefly because the Presby- 
terian commissioners demanded that Charles should take the cove- 
nant; the demand that he should give up the command of the 
militia was hardly less objectionable. The failure of negotiation 
naturally produced a reaction, and parliament, with renewed deter- 
mination to win, addressed itself to the reorganization of the army. 
^, , ^, In February it passed the "New Model Ordinance" and 

The ''New •' ^ 

Model ordi- followed it in April by the famous "Self -Denying Ordi- 
nance. ' The I J J CD 

''SeJf-Deny- nancc. " By the one, it proposed to enlist a new army 

iiig Ordi- J ■> I r -j 

nance." of 14,000 foot, G,000 horse and 1,000 dragoons; the 

recruits were to be taken from among the veterans of Essex and 
Waller and Manchester, and were to serve to the end of the war; 
strict discipline was to be introduced and regular wages pre- 
scribed. Commissions were given for merit only, and the 
gentlemen officers, who had heretofore monopolized all the appoint- 
ments, were compelled to share their honors with "plain russet 
coated captains," who had given evidence of their ability to 
command men in the tumult of battle. The officers also were 



1645] EXECUTION OF LAUD 693 

compelled to take the covenant. By the second ordinance it was 
enacted that all officers of the army and navy who were also mem- 
bers of parliament, should resign their commissions within forty 
days. In this way it was proposed to weed out Manchester and 
Essex, but unfortunately Cromwell also was included. Sir 
Thomas Fairfax, the son of Lord Fairfax, who had proved his 
ability in the northern campaigns with, his father, was made 
commander-in-chief. A rank of lieutenant-general, carrying 
with it the command of the horse, was created but significantly 
left vacant. 

One other event shows the increasing strength of the extreme 

party at Westminster. On the 10th of January, the little old 

man, whose mischievous itching for reforms had done 

Execution of n , • . ^ 

Laud, Jan- SO much to stir up the present strife, was taken from 

uary lO, 1645. , , rn 1 T T T 1 n T • 

the lower where he had been connned smce 1G41, and 
executed under sentence of the Lords. His death was a simple act 
of vengeance. His influence had long since disappeared; unlike 
Straiford, there was no occasion to fear him. 

Charles in the meantime, while Fairfax was organizing the 
"New Model," as the reconstructed army was called, had begun 

the campaign by leaving Oxford, where he was blockaded 
June 14, by Fairfax, to attack Leicester. If successful he would 

1645. 

gain a central position of great advantage. Fairfax 
marched north with the idea of forcing a battle. On June 13 
he was joined by Cromwell, who, at the solicitation of the offi- 
cers and men of Fairfax's command, had been appointed by parlia- 
ment to the still vacant post of lieutenant-general. The next day 
was fought the battle of Naseby, in which the New Model com- 
pletely justified the wisdom of its projectors, destroying the royal- 
ist army and leaving only a shattered remnant of the horse to draw 
off with Eupert and the king. But more serious to the king's 
cause than the defeat, Avas the capture of a box of secret dis- 
patches by which the whole history of his intrigues with the 
French and the Irish became known, and the little lingering confi- 
dence of the English in his good faith completely destroyed. Shires 
where thousands had sprung to arms when the king first unfnrled 
his banner, refused to fight longer for the perfidious Stuart. 



694 



THE CIVIL WAE, 



[c 



In Scotland the victories of Montrose still gave the king some 

slight hope. Montrose had left York after Marston Moor and made 

his way across the border disguised as a groom. Once 

Montrose in . . . -, . . , -, , . 

Scotland, 111 tlie Highlands he had put himseii at the head of the 

iS cu tf-TYi lycv 

i644toSep- Macdonalds. Then followed a series of daring and 
brilliant manoeuvres in which he defeated the Covenant- 
ers, September 1, at Tippermuir, and again, September 13, at 
Aberdeen. These victories cleared the eastern Lowlands and 

brought the 



Battle of NASEBY 
July 14, 1645 




Gordons to his 
side. Early in 
February he 
overthrew the 
Campbells un- 
der Argyll at 
I n V e r 1 o c h y. 
The report of 
these victories 
compelled Les- 
lie to send two 
of his best offi- 
c e r s , Baillie 
and Hurry, to 
revive the 
drooping spir- 
its of the Cov- 
enanters, and 
check the vic- 
torious career of Montrose. They were no match, however, 
for the energetic young royalist commander, and, after a long 
series of manoeuvres, were beaten at Auldearn, May 9, again at 
Alford, July 2, and finally at Kilsyth, August 15. These victories 
made Montrose master of the Lowlands. But unfortunately his 
Highlanders, after their custom, insisted upon going home to 
secure their booty, and left him with a much weakened force to 
meet David Leslie in person, who was hastening up from the south 
with the veterans who had fought at Marston Moor Montrose 



1645] KOWTON HEATH 695 

was attacked at Philiphaugh, near Selkirk, September 13, and his 
small army completely routed. In one day the fruit of all his 
victories had been swept away and nothing was left for the young 
commander but to get out of the country as quickly as possible. 
His youth, his single-hearted devotion to the king, his rapid suc- 
cesses, the suddenness and completeness of the overthrow, mark 
his career as one of the most romantic chapters of the war. 

The end of the vfar was now in sight. On July 15, a month 
after Naseby, Fairfax had defeated Goring at Langport. Mont- 
rose, however, at the time was still in the high-tide of 
the First victorv and held out a promise of success, if the king 

Civil War. . . . 

could only join forces with him. Charles accordingly 
was hurrying north with his last army, when, September 24, be 

was stopped near Chester and again defeated at Rowton 
Rowton Heath. A few days later came news of the disaster at 

Heath, Sep- -^ 

*e^^«»"'24' Philiphaugh, and the king returned to Oxford, satis- 
fied that his kingdom was not to be saved by the appeal 
to arms. His armies had been destroyed or scattered. He had 
made arrangements Avith Edward Somerset, Earl of Glamorgan, to 
bring over ten thousand Irish soldiers, but Glamorgan had been 
wrecked on the Lancashire coast. The Irish allies of Charles did 
not appear, and the project, when known, only added to the bitter- 
ness of his enemies. His scheme for securing continental help 
fared no better. Henrietta Maria had succeeded in hiring the 
services of ten thousand men of the duke of Lorraine, but neither 
the Dutch nor the French would supply the necessary ships for 
getting the duke and his mercenaries over the sea. To add to 
the discomfiture of Charles, he had scarcely reached Oxford, after 
the retreat from Rowton Heath, when he heard that Bristol 
had been stormed and Prince Rupert had surrendered. In the 
spring of 1646 the army of the west also surrendered to Fairfax, 
and in June the Puritans took possession of Oxford. Although a 
few detached castles still held out, Charles was in despair, and 
determined to throw himself upon the old-time loyalty of the 
Scots, in hope that he might find better terms with them than 
with the parliament. Accordingly in May, he suddenly appeared 
in the Scot camp before Newark, the last of the midland fortresses 



696 



THE CIVIL WAR 



[c 



to resist, and there gave himself up. They received him kindly 
and sent him to Newcastle, to be kept as a sort of hostage until 
the questions which the war had raised between the two kingdoms 
should be settled. Harlech, the last of the royalist strongholds, 
continued to hold out until the next year. The "First Civil 
War" was ended. 



CONTEMPORARIES OF THE EARLY STUARTS 
1603-1650 
KINGS OP FRANCE KING OF SWEDEN 



Henry IV., fi. 1610 
LouiA XIII., d. 1643 
Louis XIV. 



Gustavus Adolphus, 1611- 
1632 



KINGS OF DENMARK AND 
NORWAY 



Christian IV., d. 1648 
Frederick IIL 



BRANDENBURG 

Frederick William, the 
Great Elector, 1640- 
1688. 



THE PALATINATE 

Frederick IV., the Up- 
right, d. leio 

Frederick V., son-in-law 
of James I., d. 1632 



KINGS OF SPAIN 

Philip IIL, d. 1621 
Philip IV. 



EMPERORS 

Matthias, d. 1619 
Ferdinand II., d. 1637 
Ferdinand III. 



POPES 

Paul v., 1605-1621 
Gregory XV., 1621-1623 
Urban VIII., 1623-1644 
Innocent X., 1644-165.") 
Alexander VII., 1655-1667. 



EMINENT FOREIGNERS 
(NOT SOVEREIGNS) 

Wallenstein, d. 1634 
Richelieu, d. 1642 • 

Descartes, d. 1650 
Mazarin 
Moliere 



MEN EMINENT IN THE ENGLISH STRUGGLE 



Francis Bacon, d. 1626 
Edward Coke, d. 1634 
John Eliot, d. 1632 
Thomas Wentworth. Earl 

of Strafford, d. 1641 
John Hampden, d. 1643 
Lucius Cary, Viscount 

Falkland, d. 1643 



John Pym. d. 1643 

William Laud, Ai'chbi.sh'p 
of Canterbury, d. 1645 

Robert Devereux, Earl of 
Essex, d. 1646 

Ferdinand© Fairfax, Bar- 
on Fairfax, d. 1648 



Still Living in 1650 

Thomas Fairfax 

Alexander Leslie, Earl of 
Leven 

David Leslie, Lord New- 
ark 

John Milton 

Harry Vane 

Rupert, Prince of the 
Palatinate 

Oliyer Cromwell 

Edward Hyde 

Etc., etc. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE PAELIAMENT AND THE ARMY 

CHARLES L. 1646-1649 
THE COMMONWEALTH. 1649-1653 

The Long Parliament was now to snffer the fate of most revo- 
lutionary bodies which have been compellecl to call into being a 
powerful army, in order to overthrow its enemies or sup- 
TheLong port its authority. It became the victim of its own 

Parliament J^ -J 

andtheNew creature; and, although a specious disguise of parlia- 
mentary authority was still maintained, the government 
was at first controlled, and at last administered altogether, by the 
handful of officers who had won its battles and controlled the 
affections and confidence of its soldiers. The successive steps by 
which the New Model became the actual ruler of England, consti- 
tute the subject matter of the second chapter of the Revolution. 
After the surrender of the king there was every reason to 
expect a speedy and definite settlement of the troubles of the king- 
doms. The parliament had conquered, and Charles 
th'^s^'^ts^^'^ might choose between granting its demands or abdi- 
cation. But unfortunately for Charles he had not 
surrendered to the Scots for the purpose of ending the strife. 
He hoped, rather, by appealing to the old enmity of Scotsmen and 
Englishmen, to draw the Scots to his support, and thus be able 
once more to put himself at the head of a royalist army. The 
king soon found, however, that he had seriously underestimated 
the devotion of the Scots to the popular cause. Instead of hurry- 
ing home with their guest, they determined to act with the Eng- 
lish parliament. In July the Joint demands were presented. 
The New Charles was to be restored to his throne, but he must 
sitton^'uh'^' ^^^® ^^® covenant himself and consent to an act impos- 
1646. ij2g it upon bis subjects, abolish Episcopacy, consent to 

the enforcement of the laws against Roman Catholics, and sur- 
render the control of the militia and the fleet for twenty years. 

697 



698 PARLIAMENT AND THE ARMY [charlesI. 

The friends of Charles, even the queen, urged him to moderation; 
but he was blinded by the fatuous hope of securing peace without 
committing himself to any definite promises, and allowed the 
opportunity to slip by in aimless hedging and bandying of words. 

The Scots became disgusted and, in their irritation, 
January, turned the king over to the English, and went home. 

They estimated the expense to which the war had put 
them at £400,000; this parliament agreed to pay and at once 
voted the first installment of £200,000. Charles was brought into 
Northamptonshire and lodged at Holmby House. 

The wise moderation of the Scots was in marked contrast with 
the hard-headed turbulence of the English sectaries. The body of 

divines at Westminster had now been sitting since July 
leriam'and' I'^'^'^j ^'^<^5 since the Presbyterians were in overwhelm- 
mjdeT" ^^^S majority, had been steadily woi'king out a plan, 

which proposed virtually to substitute Presbyterianism 
for the Laudian system. A part of their work had already been 
adopted by the parliament where the Presbyterians were also in 
the majority. 

The New Model, however, in which Independents largely 
preponderated, and in whose ranks no difference had ever been 
made between the adherents of the several Puritan sects, was not 
pleased, and did not hesitate to express disapjjroval of measures 
which savored of persecution. The parliament could not mistake 
the awakening spirit of insubordination, and in alarm proposed to 
disband the soldiers, on the plea that, since the war had ended, it 
was unnecessary to continue the expense of such a large military 
establishment. There was, however, besides the religious interest 
a very clear financial interest at stake in which every soldier 
regardless of his faith was interested. There was due the New 
Model, for its services to the government, an arrears of £300,000, 
but parliament, in its eagerness to get rid of the now thoroughly 
insubordinate army, proposed to send the soldiers home upon 
the payment of one-sixth only of the arrears. The result was to 
precipitate the very mutiny which the parliamentary leaders so 
much dreaded. The soldiers as one man determined not to be 
disbanded until their claims for back pay had been settled in full. 



1647] THE DECLARATION OF THE ARMY 699 

They elected agents, known as "agitators," to look after their 
interests, and prepared to resist. At first Cromwell hesitated. He 
was both an officer and a member of parliament, and did all in 
his power to bring about an accommodation. But when tliis failed, 
with Fairfax he threw his whole influence on the side of his old 
comrades in arms. The parliamentary leaders in great fear 
turned to the king and called upon the Scots to assist them in 
restoring the Stuart. The terms which they offered the king 

were not known, yet they could not carry on the 
of the king, negotiations so secretly that their purport could not be 

divined, and Cromwell at once sent Cornet Joyce with a 
detachment of cavalry to Holmby to secure the king's person. 
Joyce's force, however, was hardly sufficient to hold the king in 
case of an attempt at rescue, and on June 4, acting upon his own 
responsibility, he set out with his charge for Newmarket where 
the near neighborhood of the army promised better security. 

Parliament was now thoroughly alarmed; but while the mem- 
bers were talking wildly of arresting Cromwell and of bringing the 
TheDeciara- ^"^^ts to the aid of the trained bands of London in 
^Arin'^^^^^ order to destroy the New Model, the army had begun 
June 15. to draw nearer to the city. The advance of the army, 

as well as the indifference of the trained bands, seemed for the 
moment to bring the parliament to its senses, and it consented 
to ask the army to state its grievances. On the fifteenth of June 
the Council of the Army, a body composed of the general officers 
and four representatives chosen from each regiment, sent out 
from Fairfax's headquarters at St. Albans their reply. The 
Declaration of the Army, in which they demanded an early disso- 
lution of the Commons; that a limit should be fixed for the 
duration of parliaments in the future, that the right of petition 
be acknowledged, and that religious toleration be guaranteed within 
certain limits. The Declaration was followed by an arraignment 
of eleven members of the House by name, and a demand for their 
expulsion. Parliament was in no mood to accept measures so 
humiliating, but with every passing day it became more evident 
that it had no force to pit against the New Model; the eleven 
obnoxious members, among whom were Holies and Waller, were 



700 PARLIAMENT AND THE ARMY [chaklesI. 

allowed to withdraw, and certain recent resolutions hostile to the 
army were ordered to be torn from the records. 

For a time matters promised to mend; the "purification" of 

the House had restored Presbyterians and Independents to a 

somewhat more even balance, and although the army 

Mocif/mters continued to lie within easy reach of the city, the 

London, advance was stayed. The leaders, however, were still 

August 6. •' ^ _ ' ... 

sore tried by the mingled duplicity and indecision that 
continued to mark the counsels of parliament, which one day was 
ready to grant all that the army asked and the next day destroyed 
the effect of its concessions by the intrigues of its members. 
Still, Cromwell and the other officers hesitated to march upon the 
city, hoping against hope to settle all difficulties by peaceable means. 
Bat on July 36, the intrigues of the Presbyterian leaders suc- 
ceeded at last in bringing on a great reaction in tlie city; a mob of 
apprentice boys broke into the houses of parliament and compelled 
the frightened members to undo the legislation of the past few 
weeks, that had been more friendly to the soldiers, and to recall the 
eleven members. The speakers of both Houses and many of the 
Independents fled to the army. The moment which many had 
foreseen had at last come. The oflBcers hesitated no longer, and on 
the 6th of August the New Model took possession of the city. Par- 
liament like the king was now at its mercy. 

The leaders of the army, however, particularly Fairfax, Crom- 
well, and Ireton,had no wish to establish a military dictatorship, and, 

in despair of securing a peaceful settlement of affairs 

The Heads of o j. 

thePropos- tlirouoh the Presbyterian "|)arliament, had already turned 

aU July 28 J i. ' ./ 

directly to the king, and on the 28tlihad formally sub- 
mitted to him a plan known as Tlie Heads of the Proposals,^ which 
had been drawn up by Ireton and adopted by the Council of the 
Army on the 16th. l^y this plan they offered to restore the king 
upon condition: 1. Tliat parliament should be called every two 
years and continue in session for at least one hundred and twenty 
days. 2. That a new distribution of members of the Commons 
should be made "according to some rule of proportion," which 
should abolish the representation of "decayed towns." 3. That 

'Gardiner, Const. Docs., pp. 232-241. 



1647] THE ENGAGEMENT 701 

parliament should control the militia for ten years. 4. That for 
the same period parliament should appoint the crown minis- 
ters. 5. That the jurisdiction of bishops be abolished, but that 
the Covenant should not be obligatory. 6. That all men except 
papists be given liberty to worship God in their own way. 7. 
That a general act of oblivion be passed. 

This was the opportunity of Charles to save his crown. He 
was, however, still infatuated with the idea of his personal impor- 
tance; he saw that another civil war was at hand., and believed 
that, sooner or later, one side would be compelled to call upon the 
royalists for help, and then he might make his own terms. 
Accordingly he rejected The Heads of the Proposals, and continued 
his secret intrigues with the Scots. 

In the meanwhile all things were not progressing smoothly 

even within the army. A determined band of extremists saw in 

the conciliatory propositions of the leaders, the evidence 

The flight of ^f q^ treachery deeper even than that of the parliament, 

the king, and J l r ' 

the "Engage- ^nd in their bitterness denounced Cromwell as a 
ment." 

"Judas," and clamored for the trial of Charles on the 
charge of treason. Cromwell, however, was still disposed to use all 
his influence to save the king. But Charles, who was not ignorant 
of the clamors of the soldiers, instead of throwing himself upon 
the good faith of the officers, fled from Hampton Court and finally 
sought refuge with Robert Hammond, the parliamentary governor 
of the Isle of Wight, He was lodged in Carisbrooke Castle, where 
he soon found that he was again a prisoner and under more 
restraint even than at Hampton Court. He managed, however, 
to keep up secret negotiations with a reactionary j)ai'ty of nobles 
in Scotland, who had recently come into power, and on December 

26, signed the fatal "Engagement" by which he 
mefit^^^^'^^'^' "e'lgaged" to set up Presbyterianism in England for 

three years, and root out Anabaptists, Separatists, 
Independents, and other heresies of all kinds. ^ The Scots on their 
part "engaged" to invade England and cooperate with Charles in 
overthrowing the existing parliament and reestablishing his 
authority. Then a "full and free parliament" was to be sum- 
^ Gardiner, Const- Docs., pp. 359-264. 



702 PAKLIAMENT AND THE ARMY [chaelesI. 

moned, in order to secure a permanent peace. The intrigue was 
not known at the time, but the results were soon felt. Parlia- 
ment had already sent to Charles its ultimatum, known as the 
Fotir Bills; these were now rejected. Parliament, angered 
beyond endurance, broke with the Scots,' reestablished the 
Committee of Public Safety and on January 15 passed the Vote of 
No Addresses by which it shut off all further communication with 
the king under the penalty of high treason. It was a serious 
moment. Even in London there was no small royalist reaction, 
caused in part by fear of the army, and in part by the disgust of 
the people at being compelled to keep up the war taxes, and also 
by general dissatisfaction with the self-seeking parliament. 

In the summer of 1648 risings occurred almost simultaneously 

in Kent, Sussex, Essex, Wales, and the northern counties. But 

the Scots were not yet ready to act, and left the 

The Second ... . -^ "^ . ;^ 

Civil War" Auglicans and Presbyterians of England to sustain the 
begun, 1648. . . 

beginnings of the revolt alone. Tlie English people, 

however, were weary of the Avar; few outside of the gentry and 

the towns thought seriously of arming for a new struggle; while 

even among those who rallied at the magic call of the king's 

name, there were few capable of leadership, and nothing to match 

the splendid discipline and morale of the New Model. On the 

other hand the renewal of hostilities in England, the defection of 

a great part of the fleet, and the rumor of the engagement of the 

king Avith the Scots, at once forced parliament and army to put 

by their suspicions and turn a united front to the common foe; at 

the same time the party of the extremists within the army, who 

had been calling for the trial of the king, became more active and 

their influence irresistible. In a great prayer meeting held by the 

army before departing for the war, Cromwell confessed that he 

had been at fault in attempting to negotiate with Charles at all, 

and the entire assembly resolved "that it was their duty, if ever 

the Lord brought them back again in peace, to call Charles Stuart, 

that man of blood, to an account for the blood shed in the war." 

In this grim mood the New Model, more terrible than ever, 

marched under Fairfax and CroniAvell to put down the new 

royalist uprising. Fairfax, by throwing himself before the royalist 



1648] THE SECOKTi) CIVIL WAE 703 

insurgents in Kent, effectually prevented their friends in Lon- 
don, from whom much had been expected, from making any 
operations demonstration in their favor. On June 1, he forced 
<indOn)rn- them to fight at Maidstone. The survivors retired 
iveii. jj;^I;q Colchester in Essex and closed the gates iu hope of 

holding out nntil the Scots came to their relief. Cromwell in the 
meanwhile had marched into Wales and, by a few rapid blows, 
crushed the rising before it was fairly upon its feet. He then 
hurried north to meet the Scots, who by this time had crossed 
the border and united with the northern insurgents. Theirs was 
no such army, however, as had followed Leslie into England six 
years before. The old covenanters of the duke of Argyll's follow- 
ing would have nothing to do with the friends of the "non 
covenanted king," and the new army, though considerable in 
number, was undrilled and poorly equipped. Hamilton, more- 
over, the royalist leader, had little military skill to pit against such 
a master as Cromwell. The two armies met at Preston August 
17; Cromwell outgeneraled Hamilton completely, beating one 
detachment on the 17th, and, by seizing the bridges over the Rib- 
ble and Darwen, cut off the retreat of the remainder and com- 
pletely routed them the next day at Wigan and Win wick. The 
infantry laid down their arms at Warrington; the cavalry sur- 
rendered at TJttoxeter. On the 27th of August Colchester 
surrendered to Fairfax, and all armed resistance on the land was 
at an end. 

The renewal of the Civil War, the needless shedding of the 
blood of their comrades, had put the New Model in a very danger- 
Pridc's *-*^^^ temper. After the fall of Colchester the royalist 

Purge, De- leaders, Lucas and Lisle, were immediately court mar- 
^^■^*- tialed and shot. Hamilton and other officers who took 

part in the northern rising also were executed in the following 
spring; nor were the army leaders, now fully conscious of their 
power, inclined to be more constitutional in their methods of 
dealing with parliament or the king. Parliament was still 
inclined to renew negotiations with the idea of restoring the king, 
but the army would hear of no action that had not for its object 
the bringing of Charles Stuart, the "man of blood" to justice. 



704 PARLIAMENT AND THE ARMY [chaklesI. 

The Commons, however, insisted, and on December 5 declared for a 
reconciliation. At this the oflicers became desperate; and on the 
Gth Ireton directed Colonel Pride, wlio had charge of the guard 
which had been placed at Westminster Hall, to exclude the chief. 
Presbyterian members. Pride did his work so thoroughly that 
hardly sixty members were left sitting. Cromwell returned to Lon- 
don tliat evening. 

The parliament, now no longer a parliament, but only the 
maimed instrument of the army, which later its enemies in derision 

styled the "Rump," ^ determined to proceed with the 
CT-efJf'f rt"''^ ' ^^"^'^^ °^ ^^^® king; and on January 1, 1G49 proposed to 
Hiiiii ('iturt create a special High Court of Justice for that pur- 
IheMm'''^ pose. The few lords who remained at Westminster, 

who had not yet lost all sense of self-respect, protested 
and refused their consent. Their consent, however, was a matter 
of little moment. The day had gone when the army could be 
deterred from its purpose by any mere technicalities. Cromwell 
fairly expressed the contemjDt of his comrades for forms when he 
declared: "We will cut oif the king's head with the crown upon 
it;" and the Commons, now the mere mouthpiece of the army, in 
reply to the opposition of the Lords, announced that "the people 
were under God the source of all power, and that the House of 
Commons being chosen by the people, formed the superior power 
in England, having no need of either king, or House of Lords." 
They then proceeded to establish the High Court of Justice, con- 
sisting of one hundred and thirty commissioners.^ Cromwell of 
course was a member of this court, as also Fairfax, Ireton, Harri- 
son, and Hutchinson; John Bradshaw was made president. 

The first meeting ©f the High Court of Justice was held on 
the 9th of January. Many of the commissioners had no relish for 

their task, and when on the 20th Charles was finally 
Trial and -, ^ . - i • • ^ 

death of the brought in to Westminster Hall, only sixty members 

remained at their post. Fairfax and Sir Henry Vane 

were among those who had retired. Charles denied the authority 

^ The term was first used in 1059 upon the restoration of the Long 
Parliament. 

2 Gardiner, Const. Docs., pp. 268-270. 



1649] EXECUTION OF THE KING 705 

of the unusual tribunal and refused to plead. The Judges, how- 
ever, went through the mockery of hearing evidence in order to 
prove that Charles Stuart had raised an army against the parlia- 
ment and taken part in the Civil War. On-the 27th the court 
gave its decision, declaring Charles Stuart to be "a tyrant, traitor, 
murderer, and public enemy to the good people of this nation," 
and fixed the death penalty. Fifty-nine members of the court 
set their names to the death warrant.^ On the 30th of January 
the condemned king was led out to Whitehall to die. Men beheld 
his quiet mien and gentle dignity, and forgot his crimes against 
the public law of the land. And when the tragedy was over, and 
the masked executioner held up the gory trophy of his art and 
shouted to the horror stricken crowd, "Behold the head of a 
traitor," the people were ready to believe that they had witnessed 
the death of a martyr to the church and the constitution. Within 
a few days a book appeared under the striking title, Eikon 
Basilike, "the Royal Image," which purported to have been writ- 
ten by the king himself during his captivity.^ The book did much 
to increase the growing impression of the piety and sincerity of 
the king's character, and enthrone him in the hearts of many with 
almost religious devotion. Even the skill and eloquence of Milton, 
who replied in the interests of the Independents in the Eikono- 
klastes, "the Image Breaker," could not dispel the halo which 
the tragedy of his death had placed around the head of the fallen 
king. Eleven years, however, were to elapse before the reaction 
should bear fruit in the Restoration. The "man of blood" was 
gone, but the man of iron iiad arisen in his place. 

If the Independent minority who had struck down the king, 
thought that this act would contribute to the settlement of the 

troubles of the hour, they soon found that they were 
Muitipucity seriously mistaken. With the New Model at their 

back, they had little to fear in the way of revolt, but 
by what salves were they to heal the gaping wound which they 
had left in the body of the constitution? By what steps were 
they to abandon the unconstitutional ground upon which they 

1 Gardiner, Const. Docs., pp. 287-291. 

2 The book is attributed to John Gauden, afterward bishop of Exeter. 



70G PARLIAMENT AND THE AEMY [the Commonwealth 

themselves had been standing during the past twelve months, 
and restore the state once more to the rule of law and order? 
This would have been difficult enough, had they represented the 
majority of the nation, or were they themselves united in opinion, 
or free from jealousies or suspicions. But unfortunately the 
nation was no longer with them, and they themselves were broken 
up into almost as many parties as there were leaders. There was 
a party of visionary Eepublicans, headed by Vane, who saw in the 
present moment a chance to exploit their theories. There were 
the Levellers who wanted to see a thorough-going democracy 
introduced in politics and in society. There were Monarchists, 
Army men, and all shades and varieties of each, all striving for 
power as a means of realizing their ideals. There was, moreover, 
a small group of practical men, most prominent among whom was 
Cromwell, who had no theories to exploit, but who yet had little 
sympathy with outworn forms, and wished to use the de facto 
government as it then existed as the means of restoring order and 
peace. 

Tn their ideas upon religion and church government, the party 
in power were even more hopelessly divided than upon political 
issues. George Fox and his disciples of the "inner 
divisimi^ light," continued to puzzle and exasperate the author- 
ities ; Unitarianism had taken firm root, and the Bap- 
tists were fast becoming one of the most powerful wings of the 
Independent body. Liberty of conscience and freedom in specula- 
tion, also, had produced a new crop of strange sects, of whom noth- 
ing remains to-day save their uncouth names. The "Familists," 
the "Ranters," the "Muggletonians," and "the Fifth Monarchy 
Men," had each their fervent and fanatical disciples. The Mes- 
siah, also, was announced at various points. 

The economic life of the nation had suffered seriously as a 
result of the Civil War. Thousands of individuals had been 
ruined; public works had been abandoned, in cases 
cmuzation destroyed altogether; among those that had suffered 
seriously was the great work begun by the earl of Bed- 
ford in 1634 for the draining of the Fen country. Thousands 
of acres had been thrown out of cultivation. Little respect 



1649] THE AGREEMENT OF THE PEOPLE 707 

was shown to the civil law; crime and violence had increased 
steadily ; murder, arson, and highway robbery, were common events 
of daily life. These were only symptoms of a deeper malady, the 
general decay of civilization. The best iiitellects had given their 
attention to the all-absorbing struggle of the Avar and were bent 
upon destruction rather than creation. Puritanism, moreover, in 
its grim determination to save the present from the evils of the 
past, had passed more and more under the sway of an unlovely 
asceticism, which made war upon art as it had made war upon the 
king, with all the intolerance and lack of discrimination of the 
religious devotee. Parliament had enjoined by ordinance the 
defacement of the statues in the churches and the destruction of 
the market crosses, the breaking of stained windows and the over- 
throw of high altars. Even music had not escaped these enemies 
of all that appealed to the artistic sense; and literature, if it would 
meet the favor of the official censor, must eschew all attempts at 
wit or beauty, and deck itself in the meaningless cant and dribble 
of the day, — the accepted symbols of godliness. 

It was time, therefore, that a strong and efficient government 
should be established, founded upon law and supported by the 
loyalty of the people. But how was this possible when the laws 
plainly prescribed "King, Lords, and Commons" as the most con- 
spicuous instruments of legal government, and "King, Lords, and 
Commons" had been swept away; when the great mass of the 
people were not loyal and the army was the only power in the land 
capable of exercising any authority at all, which from the nature 
of the case must be illegal and revolutionary. 

In January while the king's case was still pending, the council 
of officers had presented to the body, which still called itself a 
parliament, a plan for reconstructing the government, 
wtnnrsthc Called the "Agreement of the People."* The first 
oftiicPeo- article of this plan proposed the dissolution of the 
existing jiarliament in the coming April; but the 
Rump had its own program to carry out, and quietly ignoring 
the demand of the officers for an early dissolution, on February 
13, appointed a Council of State to exercise the executive func- 

1 Gardiner, Const. Docs. , pp. 270-282. 



708 PARLIAMENT AND THE ARMY [ 



The Commonwealth 



tions of government. On March 17 it proceeded to abolish the 
office of king, and declared any one Avho attempted to assist the 
heirs of Charles Stuart to regain the crown, to be traitors to the 
state. On March 19 it also abolished the House of Lords, declaring 
it to be "useless and dangerous," and on May 19, it declared "the 
people of England and of all the dominons and territories there- 
unto belonging ... to be a Commonwealth and Free State by the 
supreme authority of this nation."^ If, however, the Eump had 
apparently ignored the Agreement in refusing to abolish itself 
also among the rest of the wreckage of Charles's reign, the 
leaders had no wish to cut loose from the army. Not only were 
CroniAvell and Fairfax made members of the Council of State, but 
in the ordinance of March 17, the Rump formally pledged "to 
put a period to the sitting of this present parliament as soon as 
may possibly stand with the safety of the people that hath 
betrusted them," and of "the government now settled in the way 
of a Commonwealth." 

This hesitation of the Rump to vote its own death warrant, 

was not due altogether to an unworthy desire on the part of its 

members to clina; to power as lona; as possible. The 

CromweU o j. o j. 

and the danger to the "betrusting" people was real, to say 

nothing of the new Commonwealth. If they should 

allow the people to elect a new parliament, in their present temper 

there could be no question as to what kind of parliament would 

be returned; — a parliament which would at once undo all that had 

been done, proclaim C'harles II., reestablish Episcopacy, and begin 

a long series of confiscations, executions, and a general persecution 

of Independents. The men in the army, however, who had 

secured the adoption of the Agreement by the council of officers, 

Avere not satisfied. They represented the dangerous element knoAvn 

as Levellers, who, under the guidance of men like "Free-born 

John Lilburne," had been made to see the real drift of affairs, and 

declared that the laws were overthroAvn and "the military power 

thrust into the very office and seat of civil authority." This was 

true enough, but, unfortunately for their influence, Lilburne and 

his followers had begun the propaganda of an uncompromising 

^ For this series of documents, see Gardiner, pp. 394-397. 



1649] THE LEVELLEES 709 

and impossible democracy, which was to be adopted, not only in 
the state, but in the army, and which would certainly result in the 
subversion of all order, social or military. That Cromwell, who 
had heretofore been regarded as the mouthpiece of the army, was 
made a member of the Council of State, did not increase the 
popularity of the Rump with the Levellers, for Cromwell had 
now become the special object of their scorn and suspicion. "You 
will scarce speak to Cromwell," declared the arch Leveller, Lil- 
burne, "but he will lay his hand on his breast, elevate his eyes, 
and call God to record. He will weep, howl, and repent, even 
while he doth smite you under the fifth rib." The council, how- 
ever, feared the Levellers more than they feared any possible 
ambition of Cromwell, and turned to him as the one man who 
was able to save the state and society from these seventeenth cen- 
tury anarchists. "You must break these people in pieces," said 
Cromwell, "if you do not, they will break you." Here is the 
secret of Cromwell's later power. The air was quivering with 
revolution yet to come; the wildest theories were abroad; theories 
which threatened the very foundations of society. The state was 
drifting without a helmsman; a strongman was needed to save 
the old social order from total wreck. In spite, therefore, of 
the warning of the Levellers, who shrieked that Cromwell would 
make himself king, all the conservative elements still in power 
turned to him, the child of the revolution, and called upon him 
to save them from the forces which they themselves had unchained. 
The discontent was widespread; mutinous outbreaks 

1649. 

took place in London, Banbury, and Salisbury. But 
Cromwell and Fairfax, under the commission of the council, crushed 
them with an unsparing hand. Yet there were only three execu- 
tions, — a cornet and two corporals. Lilburne already was in the 
Tower and in October was tried on the charge of stirring up treason 
in the army, but acquitted. The rest of the mutineers were received 
again into the ranks. Cromwell, with his practical common sense, 
his deep conservative instincts, saw that, with Ireland in uproai', 
Scotland hostile, and the great mass of the English people disloyal 
and ready to take advantage of the first sign of weakness on the 
part of the government, it was no time to be discussing theories of 



710 PAELIAME]SrT AND THE ARMY [the Commonwealth 

government, or quarreling as to the ultimate forms by which the 
state should be administered. The Knm|), therefore, was left to 
continue its revolutionary powers for four years longer, while he 
turned with the New Model to complete the work which it had 
begun. 

The Irish, it will be remembered, had begun a revolt in 1641 
which had soon drifted into a war of Catholics against Protestants, 
of the original Celtic inhabitants and the old Anglo- 
inftheCivii ^omiau aristocracy against Anglicans and Puritans. 
2ip!"' ^^'^^" ^^^^ ^^^^ outbreak of the Civil War in England had en- 
tirely changed the earlier character of the struggle. In 
1642 a "General Assembly of the Catholic Confederates" was held 
at Kilkenny, — a sort of National Irish Parliament. It entrusted 
the government to a "Supreme Coancil" and made Owen O'Neil 
commander-in-chief. It was with this government that Charles 
concluded the Cessation of 1643, that stirred up so much bitter- 
ness at home. In 1645 Charles sent to Ireland, as his agent, the 
earl of Glamorgan, to get the Catholic Confederates to send help 
to him in England. In return, by the "Glamorgan Treaty," he 
virtually consented to the reestablishment of the Catholic Church 
in Ireland. During these years of trouble, the unenviable post of 
king's deputy, or lieutenant, had been held by a high-minded Irish 
noble, James Butler, who was first Earl, and then Marquis, and 
finally Dnke, of Ormond. He was able and popular, a staunch 
royalist, and kept up a brave fight against overwhelming odds. In 
1647 Dublin was surrendered to the Puritans and Ormond retired 
to England. Then, also, the Anglo-Norman Lords and the 
native Irishry began to fall out over the question of the restoration 
of the papal authority. The death of the king, however, had at 
once healed all differences. Ormond had returned the year before 
and, under pledge of removing the disabilities of the Irish Cath- 
olics, had already rallied the Catholic Lords and the Protestant 
royalists to his support. When news reached him of the end of 
the fatal tragedy at Whitehall, he had proclaimed Charles II., and 
even the Ulster Presbyterians had joined his standard. He was 
further strengthened by the accession of royalist refugees from 
England; the fleet, also, the greater part of which had gone over 



IRELAND 

during 

CIVIL WAES 

and 

LATER STUAET PBKIOD 




1649] CKOMWELL IN IRELAND 711 

to the king at the outbreak of the second Civil War, was brought 
around to the coast by Prince Eupert and awaited to assure the 
new King Charles a safe landing whenever he should appear. 
The parliamentary general, George Monk, still held Dundalk, and 
the gallant Colonel Michael Jones held Dublin; but these two 
posts were almost the only footholds which the Commonwealth 
had continued to retain, and even these were besieged by the Irish 
in overwhelming numbers. If Ireland, therefore, were to be saved 
to the Commonwealth, and the reaction in England prevented from 
securing here an important base for the future, action must be 
taken at once. 

The government turned to Cromwell and found him and his 
Ironsides just as ready to fight royalists in Ireland as in Eng- 
land. When, however, Cromwell landed on the 15th 
CromweUin o^ -Aiigust, the crisis was already passed. Dundalk had 
Ireland, 1649. fallen, but Colonel Jones had made a sortie with 
his little garrison of five thousand men and so com- 
pletely shattered Ormond's force, that when Cromwell appeared, 
the Irish, instead of meeting him in the open field, retired behind 
the high walls of such fortresses as Drogheda and Wexford, in hope 
of tiring him out by a series of vexatious sieges. But they hardly 
knew the man with whom they were now dealing. On the 3d of 
September Cromwell appeared before Drogheda, and on the 10th 
summoned its garrison of 2,800 men, the flower of Ormond's 
English soldiery, to surrender. The garrison refused, and the 
next day Cromwell took the place by assault. No quarter was 
given; every man in arms was slaughtered outright, save a few 
who were shipped off as slaves to the sugar plantations of the Bar- 
badoes. The men of the cassock who were found in the city 
suffered the fate of the soldiers. Cromwell's excuse for this mas- 
sacre was that it would deter others from resistance and, by short- 
ening the war, "tend to prevent the effusion of blood in the 
future." The next month the garrison of Wexford suffered the 
fate of the defenders of Drogheda. It was not necessary to repeat 
the bloody lesson a third time. To most of the garrisons the sum- 
mons to surrender Avas sufficient. While Cromwell was thus 
vigorously putting down the royalists on the land, Blake was push- 



712 PARLIAMENT AND THE ARM!' [ 



The Commonwealth 



ing the royalist navy upon the Irish seas until Rupert was glad to 
retire to Portugal. In March Cromwell returned home at the 
urgent summons of parliament, and left the completion of his work 
to Ireton. The English who remained suffered severely from 
fever; some of their best men died ; among them Jones, and finally 
Ireton himself. But the hope of the Stuarts of securing help in 
Ireland had vanished; and with the Stuart passed also the last 
chance of a successful Irish revolt. The Catholic form of worship 
was suppressed; the lands of the Celtic proprietors were confiscated 
and turned over to Puritan veterans or sold to speculators, 
"Undertakers," who promised to find settlers. An iron rule was 
introduced, rapine and murder punished, and peace once more 
reigned over the desolate country. 

Cromwell had heen called home by the threat of a new war 
with Scotland. After the overthrow of Hamilton at Preston, 
Argyll, supported bv the old Covenanters, who had here- 
Charles and tofore acted with the English parliament, once more 
gained control of the government and renewed for the 
moment the old understanding. The Scots, however, were not 
pleased by the late drift of affairs in England and when they heard 
of the execution of the king, as they were an independent people, 
they at once invited the Prince of Wales to be their king, but stipu- 
lated that he take the Covenant. Prince Charles was at this time 
about twenty years old, with a well established reputation for 
general frivol ousness and insincerity. He was witty, keen, and 
with many intellectual qualities of a high order, but utterly lack- 
ing in the moral fiber necessary to success in a desperate under- 
taking. Between him and the Scottish Covenanters there could 
be little in common ; nor was he eager to seize a crown tagged 
with their hated Covenant. He preferred, therefore, to make an 
effort to secure the prize in such a wa)'", that he should be bound 
by no promise. Accordingly he secretly commissioned Montrose 
to try his fortunes again in the Highlands, and raise if possible 
the old royalists whom he had so often led to victory in 1645. 
The clans, however, showed little enthusiasm for the rising, 
and the few men whom Montrose brought with him from 
Holland and the Orkneys, were easily dispersed at Corbiesdale. 



1650] CKOMWELL IN SCOTLAND 713 

Montrose was soon after betrayed by a Highland chieftain, brought 
to Edinburgh, and there hanged at the Market Cross. Charles 

was mean enough to repudiate the high-souled warrior, 
April 27, ' who had so nobly laid down life in his service, and, 

seeing that there was no chance of securing the 
crown by means of a royalist rising, accepted the terms of the 
Covenanters swallowing the National Covenant as well as the 
Solemn League and Covenant. He gave his word-, moreover, 
to act always with the parliament and to establish Presbyterianism 
both in England and i]i Ireland. He landed at Speymouth the 
month after Montrose's death. 

The Rump in the meanwhile had been following the drift of 
events in Scotland with watchful heed ; they knew that Charles 

would never be satisfied with Scotland alone, and 
of Fairfax, determined to strike at once and expel him before he 
siipreme had gathered the strength of his little kingdom. Fair- 

fax, who up to this point had retained his commission 
in the army, objected to violating the Solemn League and 
Covenant upon the ground of mere "human probabilities," and 
threw up his commission rather than lead in a war against his old 
allies. Cromwell was at once advanced to the vacant post of Lord 
General. 

In July 1650 Cromwell crossed the border with an army of six- 
teen thousand men supported by the fleet, which followed the 

coast to furnish them with supplies on the march, for 
Scomnd^^^ the Scots as usual had com^iletely wasted the country. 

He found the Scots under the command of David 
Leslie, in a strong position near Leith, but, after manojuvering for 
a month without dislodging them, he was compelled to retire to 
Dunbar. Leslie followed him warily and seized the Hill of Doon 
above Dunbar, at the same time sending a detachment to seize 
Cockburnspath, a sort of Thermopylae, where the Lammermnir 
range comes down to the sea, leaving scarcely room for a coach 
to pass; the way was so narrow that a handful of determined men 
might hold it against an army. There were only two wajs for 
Cromwell to get out of the difficulty; he might storm the enemy's 
position on Doon Hill, or he might embark his troops and steal 



714 



PARLIAMENT AJSTD THE AKMY 



The Commonwealth 



away by sea. But fortunately for Cromwell, Leslie, who had 
grown overconfident, possibly, and feared only the escape of the 
English, on September 2, moved down into the low ground by 
the sea in order to get Avithin striking distance should the enemy 
attempt to decamp. Cronnvell saAV his advantage and under cover 
of the night following, which was dark and stormy, brought his 
army into position to attack Leslie's right wing on the flank. The 
attack began at four in the morning; the Scots were taken entirely 



or^fi 




^S''''^-ZDOON HILL 



s^-' 



by surprise; many of the officers had sought shelter from the 
storm in neighboring farmhouses and were not with their regi- 
ments. The right wing was doubled back upon the center and soon 
the whole body was thrown into hopeless confusion. At daybreak 
the entire Scottish army was scattered among the Lammermuir 
hills, and Cromwell's road to Edinburgh lay open. It was one of 
tlie most masterly actions of the war and displayed Cromwell's 
military genius at its best. He had turned what, on the evening 



165l] WOECESTER 715 

of the 2d of September, promised to be a humiliating defeat into a 
splendid victory/ Edinburgh opened its gates and before the end 
of the year all southern Scotland lay at the mercy of the English. 
From Dunbar Leslie retired to Stirling wheje he again took up 
a position too strong to be assailed in front and in close communi- 
cation with the northern districts which lay behind 
rades Eng- him. Cromwell in order to turn Leslie's position 
crossed the Fortli, and placed himself in his rear. 
The movement, however, left the road into England open ; Leslie 
thought he saw an opportunity, by making a rush for the border, 
of getting into England before Cromwell and encouraging a gen- 
eral rising in the name of Charles 11. , who had been crowned King 
of Scotland at Scone in January. In i\-ugust, therefore, Leslie 
suddenly broke camp, and began a series of forced marches for 
the border. Cromwell, leaving Monk in Scotland, hurried after 
Leslie with his main body, sending Lambert ahead to turn him 
from London. Lambert easily outmarched the Scots and, passing 
Leslie while he was still in Cheshire, seized all the roads to Lon- 
don. Leslie was thus forced into the valley of the Severn. Here 
in the past the Stuarts could always count upon a strong following, 
but the English of the Severn had no liking for this king who 
came upon them at the head of an army of Scotsmen. Fairfax 
came from his retirement to put himself at the head of the 
militia. Everywhere the country was rising, and on September 
3d, just one year after Dunbar, Leslie found himself at Worcester, 
confronted by Cromwell with thirty thousand men. His own 
force did not exceed eleven thousand. The Scots faced these 
tremendous odds and fought with the heroism of despair. Leslie, 
Derby, and Lauderdale were taken. Only a remnant of the army 
managed to get back to Scotland. Charles, assisted by English 
royalists, who had refused to fight for him, escaped from the 
field, and, after six weeks of wandering, through a series of 
romantic adventures which have long since attracted the eye of 
the novelist, at last reached Brighton and got away to France. 
The submission of Scotland followed; the Presbyterian Assemblies 

^ For a recent important contribution upon Dunbar, see Firth, The 
Battle of Dunbar, in Transactions of Royal Historical Society, 1900. 



716 PARLIAMENT AND THE ARMY [ 



Thk Commonwealth 



were suppressed, and Argyll, after holding out a year in his castle 

of Inverary, agreed that Scotland should be united with England 

into a Commonwealth without king or lords. Cromwell, after "the 

crowning mercy," as he styled the victory of Worcester, returned 

to London and quietly assumed his old duties in connection with 

the several committees of the council. 

While Cromwell had been establishing the authority of the 

Commonwealth within the British Islands, Admiral Blake, hardly 

less eminent in naval warfare, had been extending its 
T?!e Com- . 

wmiwcaith prestige upon the seas. He had driven Rupert from the 

Irish coast, followed him to the Tagus, and finally com- 
pelled him to cross the Atlantic, where Rupert hoped to find shelter 
among the English harbors in the West Indies. When, however, 
Rupert appeared in the western seas at the end of May 1652, he 
found that the last colony had submitted to the Commonwealth 
and that the English ports in the new world also were closed to 
him. Rupert had no recourse left save to throw himself upon the 
hospitality of the French. He was received of course, for the 
French have always lo\'ed Englishmen who fight against England. 
As soon as his squadron was refitted, he again faced the open sea, 
looking for English merchantmen ; a career of joiracy was virtually 
all that was left for the dashing cavalier. But the storms of the 
tropics, however, were to prove more fatal than the guns of Blake, 
and after losing the great part of his fleet in a hurricane off the 
rocks of Anegadas, he returned to Europe early tLe next year, to 
disband his crews and sell his few surviving ships to the French. 
Wherever the English flag floated, on land or sea, the Common- 
wealth was now recognized. 

The Commonwealth had never been popular in the courts of 
Europe. Yet Spain had no motive for interfering in the domestic 
affairs of England and soon recognized the new govern- 
momvcaWi ment. The young king of France, on the other hand, 
m Europe. ^^^^ ^ cousin of the exiled Stuart, and the sympathies 
of the court were easily enlisted in his favor. French and English 
merchantmen, also, as usual in troubled times, had begun to prey 
npon each other, and the English had licensed this piracy by issu- 
ing regular letters of reprisal. The French government was 



1650, 165l] ENGLAND AND THE DUTCH 717 

grieved very naturallj^ and refused to recognize the Common- 
wealth unless the letters of reprisal were withdrawn. 

In the Hague it might be expected that England would find 
friends. But a series of grievances, sprung of commercial rivalry 

and dating back as far as the reign of James I., had 
Fhe^HacuT'^ ^®^^ nourished by both people, and had kept alive a 

feeling of bitterness, which had more than once been 
fanned into acts of open hostility. The Stadh older William II., 
moreover, was the son-in-law of Charles I., and had given asylum 
to English royalists as freely as the French ; some of the hot-headed 
followers of Montrose, who had fled hither after Philiphaugh and 
had been roused by the execution of the king, in May 1649 had 
murdered the envoy of the new-made republic, three days after 
his arrival at the Hague. The Dutch government, instead of offer- 
ing redress for this outrage, presented a formal remonstrance 
against the execution of the king. In 1650 William II. died, and 
although the Hollanders refused to continue the office of Stad- 
holder, the change did not increase the influence of England, since 
the supreme authority in the States -General of the Seven Prov- 
inces, rested in the hands of a body of rich merchants, who par- 
ticularly cherished all the old grudges and more t3ian ever feared 
the commercial activity of the English. In 1651 the Dutch saw 
these fears fully justified in the passage by the English parliament 
of the famous act known afterward as the First Navigation Act. 
By this act foreign vessels were forbidden to bring into an English 
port any goods other than those produced in their own countries. 
The measure was not aimed particularly at the Dutch, but was 
designed rather to favor the English carrying trade. But it 
affected the Dutch most, for they had become the common car- 
riers of Europe, and were vigorous competitors of the English in 
their own ports. Henceforth no Dutch merchantmen could bring 
into England, or take out to the English colonies, anything save 
the products of the Low Countries. A far more serious cause of 
quarrel lay in the claim of the English privateers of the right to 
seize and bring into port for trial Dutch vessels suspected of carry- 
ing French goods. English sailors, moreover, were not over nice 
in handling Dutchmen, and it was no uncommon thing to put 



718 PARLIAMENT AND THE ARMY [the Commonwealth 

them to the torture to force a false acknowledgment of French 
goods. In 1652 these seizures rapidly increased, and the Dutch 
saw their carrying trade, which was the chief source of their 
wealth, in danger of utter destruction. Another cause of irrita- 
tion, also, was given by the English revival of the old Plantagenet 
claim to sovereignty over the British seas. The Dutch were not 
to fish in the seas without paying a tribute for the privilege, and 
flag and sail must be dipped whenever a Dutch vessel passed an 
English flag within these waters. The most serious of these 
grievances, however, was the claim of a right to seize Dutch ves- 
sels in search for French goods. The English were undoubtedly 
acting within the old law; for the principle, which is now com- 
monly accepted, that the flag covers the goods except in case of 
contraband of war had been only recently introduced by the Dutch 
themselves in their treaty with Spain of 1648. 

At the opening of 1652, therefore, the two countries were 
rapidly drifting into war. The Dutch have always been a 

proverbially patient people, but the English tyranny on 
^it!)W(fr ^^® ^®^^ ^^^^ ^^^^ passing beyond the limits even of a 

Dutchman's patience. Yet the Dutch navy was but 
poorly prepared for war and the government hesitated to instruct 
its admiral, the famous van Tromp, to resist. However, when 
questioned about his custom of dipping the flag, his answer had 
an ominous sound: "AYhen the English are the stronger, then we 
lower the flag, otherwise not." The government evidently was 
satisfied and left the old sea dog to settle the matter in his own 
way. 

The English council had been by no means a unit in pressing 
these obnoxious measures upon the Dutchmen. The army as 

usual was jealous of the navy and had little interest in 
Cromwell to ^ War whicli must be fought at sea. To Cromwell and 
Dutch tvar. QJ^j^ers, a war with the Dutch seemed almost like a war 
upon their own kindred; at one time a utopian scheme of uniting 
the two republics into one great commonwealth, had found con- 
siderable favor with the council, and envoys had been actually 
sent to the Hague to broach the matter. Vane and others, how- 
ever, who were deeply interested in building up English commerce 



1652] THE FIRST DUTCH WAR 719 

and looked upon the war as the surest way of accomplishing this 
end, carried their point, and the Dutch were left the alternative, 
either to fight or submit. 

In May hostilities were begun by Blake and Yan Tromp off Folk- 
stone. In July parliament declared war. Several minor engage- 
ments occurred during the summer and early autumn 
ilulcirwar without any particular advantage on either side, but on 
hegumMay the 30th of November 1652 Yan Tromp, after eight 
hours of hard fighting off Dungeness, with ninety ships 
defeated Blake with forty ships. The blow was so serious that the 
English feared that a blockade of the Thames would follow. The 
peace party, toward which Cromwell himself leaned, who depre- 
cated a war with their fellow Protestant republic as tlie height of 
folly for both countries, urged a speedy peace, but Yane and Mar- 
tin were still all-powerful in the Eump and the council, and 
instead of suing for peace, sent out a new fleet under Blake, Dean, 
and Monk. On the 18th of February, off Portland Bill, the Eng- 
lish fell in with Yan Tromp in convoy of the Bordeaux fleet, and, 
in a running fight of three days, completely discomfited him, 
capturing eleven ships of war and thirty merchantmen. 

The reversal of the fortunes of war, however, came too late to 
save the Rump. It had never been popular; nor had it been able 
to court popularity by diminishing taxation. It had 
mssamac- attempted to save those who were loyal to the Gommon- 
Bmto/>"''^''^ wealth from some of the burdens of the war by despoil- 
ing the "Malignants," as the royalists were called, either 
confiscating their estates outright or imposing a ruinous compo- 
sition. But the injustice of these acts had only reacted upon the 
Rump, and charges of corruption and favoritism, too well founded 
in many instances, were freely circulated and believed. Outside 
of Westminster, moreover, certain wild plans of reform were daily 
winning new adherents, particularly in the army. Conspicuous 
among these reformers were the Fifth Monarchy Men, to whom 
belonged some men of considerable influence, as Major General 
Harrison. They believed that the second coming of Christ was at 
hand, and that it was the duty of the godly to use force in ushering 
in that event by establishing the rule of the saints on earth. The 



720 PARLIAMENT ANJD THE ARMY [the 



Commonwealth 



propagation of such views naturally increased the general dissatis- 
faction with the Rump, whose rule had now come to be regarded 
as responsible for the slow pace with which the hoped-for social and 
religious reforms had appeared. The members cared little for the 
dissatisfaction of the country, but they knew that they could not 
defy the sentiment which was growing in the army. When, there- 
fore, the battle of Worcester brought the army home again, and 
the leaders once more began to take an active part in politics, the 
Eump was forced to act, and in November 1651, it definitely fixed 
npon November 3, 1654, as the day when it would formally retire. 
The members then turned their attention to closing up their work 
and preparing for their successors. In February 1652 they passed 
an act of oblivion which was to cover all offenses of both parties 
prior to the battle of Worcester. They made provision, also, for 
the payment of all sums due the soldiers. They still feared a 
free, popular election, however, such as the army demanded, and 
in August Sir Henry A^ane introduced a measure by which the 
present members were to retain their seats and new writs were 
to be issued only for those election districts which had been deprived 
of representation by Pride's Purge, or by death, or other cause; 
the new members further were to be approved by the old Rump. 

The "Perpetuation Bill," as it was called in derision by the 
enemies of the Rump, which proioosed not to elect a new parlia- 
ment, but simply to recruit the old one, naturally did 
The Rump jjqI^ satisfy the army. The leaders protested, and in 
April 20, hope of reaching a compromise, a series of informal 
conferences were held in which the matter was dis- 
cussed freely between Yane, Whitelock, and others of the Rumi^, 
and Cromwell, Harrison, and other representatives of the army. On 
the evening of April 19,. 1653, a conference had been held at Crom- 
well's lodgings and had broken up as usual without an agreement, 
but with a tacit understanding that another conference should be 
held before final measures were taken. When, therefore, the next 
morning, word was brought to Cromwell that parliament was 
about to pass the bill after all, he summoned a company of the 
men who had long learned to obey him without a question, and 
went with them to the parliament house. Leaving his men in the 



1653] THE RUMP EXPELLED 721 

lobby he entered the House. As he belonged there and was 
dressed in citizen's clothes, his entry probably attracted little 
notice. For a while he listened to the debate and waited; but 
when the motion was made for the third reading, he arose and 
began to speak. At first his manner was quiet and under full 
control. But as he continued to speak of the injustice, the self- 
seeking, and abuse of high power, of the men who sat before him, 
he warmed to his work and with soldier like bluntness singled out 
Vane, Martin, and others as the objects of direct attack. The first 
surprise of the members passed off, and Sir Peter Went worth 
arose to call the daring debater to order, but Cromwell turned 
upon him and shouted, "Come, come, sir! we have had enough of 
this ! I will put an end to your prating !" Then facing the door, he 
bade Harrison call the soldiers. The doors flew open ; arms 
gleamed in the old hall, and the Rump was ignominiously turned 
out into the world, Neither the Rump nor the Long Parlia- 
ment, however, was yet to pass into history. Under the law of 
its own making none but the Long Parliament could dissolve the 
Long Parliament. 



CHAPTEK V 

CEOMWELL AND THE PliOTECTOEATE 

OLIVER CROMWELL, 165S-165H 
RICHARD CROanVELL, 16M-ie59 

Cromwell's position was now a difficult one. All the old recog- 
nized agents of government had been swept away; King, Lords, 

and finally Commons, each in succession had been 
Cromwdf swept itito the pit of its own digging. Cromwell was 

the general of the army ; but when had a general gov- 
erned England by right of his military commission? Even the 
Kump had been sanctioned in the minds of thousands of English- 
men by some last clinging shreds of legality, associated with the 
sacred name of parliament which it still bore and with the legis- 
lative functions which it had continued to exercise; — name and 
functions which doubtless had obscured in the minds of many the 
real fact that since the death of the king the actual governor of 
England had not been parliament at all, but the army. But now 
the bald truth could no longer be disguised ; the revolution had 
degenerated into a successful military mutiny; the army had 
turned upon its legal superiors, driven them from power, and 
assumed direct control of all the resources of the state. In the 
nature of things, however, this new order could not be permanent; 
mere physical force alone, without legal authority, could not long 
command the obedience of Englishmen. But what should take 
its place? Could a form of government be devised, which would 
satisfy the popular respect for law, save Cromwell from the oppro- 
brium of instituting military rule, and thus, by anticipating the 
inevitable reaction, save the Commonwealth? 

This was the problem which confronted Cromwell when, on that 
memorable April morning of 1053, he returned to his lodgings 
with the key to the Parliament Hall in his pocket. Some hoped, 
and perhaps expected, that Cromwell would make himself king. 



1653] THE PROVISIONAL COUNCIL 723 

They saw no hope for the country, no protection for business or 
trade, unless a strong hand should seize and direct the state; and 
who could do this better than Cromwell? It was due 
views of the no doubt to this very natural enthusiasm for the suc- 
cessful general that Cromwell's portrait, adorned with 
three crowns, mysteriously appeared in the London Stock Ex- 
change, with these significant lines written underneath : 

"Ascend three thrones, great Captain and Divine: 
By the will of God, Oh Lion, for th'are thine." ^ 

Bat such a consummation of the revolution could only be sup- 
ported and maintained by the army, and Cromwell was too shrewd 
to adopt a course which would commit him altogether to the 
army as the sole support of his authority. The army was as full 
of visionaries and "cranks" as an Independent "prophesying" 
meeting; the great mass of the soldiers, moreover, had no wish to 
see the Rump replaced by a one-man power. Some of the gen- 
erals, as Ludlow in Ireland, much as they disliked the Rump, had 
openly expressed the strongest disapproval of the act of the 23d; 
and others who acquiesced, were known to disapprove, while states- 
men like Vane, Martin, and Bradshaw, who had been turned out 
with the. Rump, were deeply offended and might be expected to 
make trouble sooner or later. Some hoped that Cromwell would 
restore the old order by bringing back the Stuarts; others, that he 
would call a free parliament ; but whatever view men took of the 
future, all saw that for the moment Cromwell was master of the 
situation and it was for him to say what should replace the Rump. 
Fortunately for the peace of England, Cromwell had no 
theories to exploit, but, with the same pi'actical sagacity with 

which he had won his battles, addressed the new 
)ii(mai coun- task wliich Confronted him. On April 29 be called 

about him a provisional Council of State, consisting of 
seven men from the army and three civilians. The "Decem- 
virate," as the royalists called the new council, was apparently as 
representative a body as Cromwell, under the circumstances, was 

' There were ten lines in all. For full stanza see Gardiner, Common- 
wealth and Protectorate, II, p. 228. 



724 THE PKOTECTORATE [ 



Olivkr Cromwell 



able to bring together. He offered a seat to Fairfax, and would 
have invited Vane also, if the officers had permitted it. As 
constituted, the council was sharply divided into two parties: the 
friends of Cromwell, who wished at once to make him protector if 
not king; and the men who suspected Cromwell, of whom the leader 
was Harrison who was irrevocably opposed to a one-man govern- 
ment and wished to put the administration in the hands of "the 
saints." But the man who held the balance of power, was "Bot- 
tomless" Lambert; — an epithet which Cromwell had fixed on him 
because of his sjDhinx like reticence in expressing his real views. 
He had great influence among the common soldiers, and even 
among the royalists, who conceived the idea that he was secretly 
in favor of bringing back the Stuarts. 

Much as Cromwell disliked Harrison's plan of turning the 

government over to a Sanhedrim of pious fanatics, the uncertainty 

which attended Lambert, the desirability of securing 

Provision for , ti-»t, ■ -, t i ■ 

caMng a the Support of Harrison and his followers, induced him 
at last to consent to giving the "saints" a trial. The 
Independent ministers in each county of England were invited in 
the name of the General and the Council of the .Army, to consult 
with their congregations and submit the names of such persons as 
they considered fit to sit in parliament; the nominees must be 
faithful, fear God, and hate "covetousness," — the Puritan's name 
for political corruption. On the 28th of May the replies were all 
in, and the council proceeded to select 129 representatives for Eng- 
land. To them were added five for Ireland and six for Scotland. 
"For the first time in history a body was to meet in the name of 
the three peoples." 

The Council of State, now increased to thirteen members, 
busied itself in the meantime with the ordinary routine of govern- 
ment. There was much to be done in the way of 
memwicu i'<?foi'ni, but Cromwell and the other members evidently 
had fnlly accepted the merely provisional nature of 
their powers, and refrained from j)rejudicing or anticipating any 
of the measures of the nominees to whom they intended to commit 
the real work of government. One departure from this policy is 
worthy of notice. Bear-baiting and bull-baiting had long since 



1653] THE NOMINATED PARLIAMENT 725 

nroused the disapproval of the Puritan conscience, not because the 
custom gave "pleasure to the spectators," but because it fostered 

immorality. The provisional council, therefore, while 
mmresHeT^ Waiting for the assembling of the new parliament, 

thought the matter urgent enough to act at once, and 
accordingly ordered the obnoxious custom to be suppressed, and 
appointed a committee, of which Colonel Pride was a member, to 
carry the order into effect. 

The body of nominated commissioners, for parliament it can 
hardly be called, at last assembled on July 4. One of the mem- 
The ''Nomi- ^®^'® from London was a Baptist preacher, leather mer- 
''^'Littie"' chant, and politician, who was apparently well known 
PariiamenV j^ fj^Q city, and wliose unfortunate name, Praise-God 
Barbone, doubtless had already been the subject of many a merry 
Jest. At all events the name was now too much for the wags, who 
straightway christened the assembly "Barebone's Parliament." 
As might be expected from the method of selection, the great body 
of the nominees were men of the very highest integrity. Some 
possessed real ability ; but the most were lacking in practical wis- 
dom. In his address at the opening session, Cromwell told them 
that they had been invited to rule England because they were 
godly. It was soon to be proved, however, that godliness, at least 
of their kind, was not the fittest qualification for the office of 
legislator in such troubled times. 

On July 5 the nominees took up their quarters in the old 
House of Commons and proceeded to organize. Francis Rous, the 
Failure of ^.uthor of the metrical version of the Psalms so long 
nated'parUa- i^sed in the Puritan churches, was elected Speaker; and 
meiit. Cromwell, Lambert, Harrison, and Desborough were 

invited to take seats as members. On the 6th the commission 
voted to call itself a parliament, and later continued the authority 
of the existing Council of State to November 3d, at the same 
time increasing the number of councillors to thirty-one. Crom- 
well, being a member both of the parliament and the council, as 
well as General of the army, retained his position of central influ- 
ence. Harrison, however, was the natural leader of the enthusiasts 
in the House, and it was not long before he had gathered about 



726 THE PROTECTORATE [oliver Cromwell 

him a considerable party, not a majority, bu , earnest, aggressive, 
and strong enough to have their way in most ordinary sessions, 
when the full membership was not present.^ After the routine of 
organizing the government was completed, the members addressed 
themselves to the serious reforms which demanded their attention. 
Very soon, however, it became evident to the outsiders, if not to 
themselves, that they were peculiarly unfitted for the work to 
which they had been appointed. In all their number was not to 
be found a single practicing lawyer; lawyers apparently were 
scarce among "the godly kind." Nevertheless, Barebone's 
Parliament went at its work with sublime self-confidence. Most 
of the proposed reforms, however, it must be admitted, although 
all more or less radical, were certainly sound, and have since been 
ado2)ted by succeeding parliaments even to the abolition of the 
Court of Chancery. Thus they proposed to establish county 
courts for the recovery of small debts ; they abolished imprison- 
ment for debt; they declared in favor of paying salaries to judges, 
instead of supporting them by fees ; they compelled the registra- 
tion of marriages, births, and deaths; made marriage a civil rite; 
attempted to simplify land tenures, and desired to establish an 
improved system of poor houses. They proposed, also, to do away 
with the appointment to church livings by private persons, as well 
as the whole system of tithes. Such reforms, sensible as they seem 
to-day, were too vigorous for the seventeenth century. The law- 
yers, the clergy, the country gentry, Lambert, even Cromwell him- 
self at last, looked on in consternation. Yet Cromwell, the only 
man who had the power to interfere, hesitated. It would not do 
to invade the Parliament House with soldiers a second time. Some 
of his friends, however, including Lambert, who had now thrown all 
his support on the side of Cromwell, decided to relieve the General 
of his embarrassment, and on the 12th of December by preconcerted 
arrangement came together at an unusually early hoiu' and, vot- 
ing to give back their authority to Cromwell, declared the assembly 
at an end. When the other members arrived, they found that they 
had been dissolved by their own act and nothing was left for them 

^ A list published in Gardiner, II. , 259 makes the number of the 
"moderates" 84; of the "advanced party" 60. 



1653] THE INSTRUMENT OF GOVERNMENT 727 

but to acquiesce and go home. The whole nation gave a sigh of 
relief; the lawyers of the Inns of Court celebrated the event with 
boisterous rejoicings. 

It is too much to believe that Cromwell, shrewd as he undoubt- 
edly was, had foreseen how the experiment of Harrison and the 
saints would turn out; but had he foreseen it, he could 

The hiAtru- 

mcnt of not have adopted a course which would have contributed 

more to his own strength, or more certainly driven the 
men of property to him for protection against the possibilities of 
further revolution, which lurked in the vagaries of radicals like 
Harrison. Even Lambert saw that the only hope of saving the 
state lay in Cromwell. When, therefore, on December 16, Lam- 
bert came forward with a scheme which placed monarchical power 
in the hands of Cromwell, all except the extreme sectaries and 
those who had opposed the dissolution of the Long Parliament, 
were ready to accept it as the wisest possible solution of the pres- 
ent difficulty. This plan, embodied in "The Instrument of Gov- 
ernment,"^ is particularly interesting to an American, because it 
based political authority, not upon the law of custom, but upon a 
written constitution as in the United States, and, if not the first, ^ 
is certainly the second of its kind of modern times. It provided for 
the three kingdoms a common government to consist of a chief 
executive to be styled the Lord Protector; a Council of State of 
not more than twenty-one members, nor less than thirteen; and a 
parliameut of one House, consisting of 460 members, thirty of 
whom were assigned to Ireland and thirty to Scotland. Oliver 
Cromwell was named in the document as the first Lord Protector, 
and was further declared to hold the office for life. The office, 
however, was not to be hereditary, and upon his death, the coun- 
cil were to appoint a successor. The members of the Council of 
State, also, were named in the document to the number of fifteen. 
In case of death or removal of a member for any cause, the parlia- 
ment was to submit ^.o the council six names, from which they in 
turn were to select two; from these the protector should appoint 

'See Gardiner, Coast. Docs., pp. 314-325. 

2 American writers are accustomed to claim this honor for the Funda- 
mental Orders of Connecticut of 1638-39. 



728 THE PROTECTORATE [i 



Oliver Gkomwell 



one to fill the vacancy. In case of corruption or malfeasance, a 
Joint committee of parliament and coancil were to investigate and 
pronounce punishment, "which punishment might not be pardoned 
or remitted by the Lord Protector." The parliament was to be 
elected by a new apportionment based upon population, in which 
the "small boroughs" were to be no longer allowed a representa- 
tion. Those who possessed a proper Dy of the value of £200 were 
to be electors in the shires, provided they were not Catholics, or 
had not fought against parliament. The Lord Protector, assisted 
by the Council of State, was to exercise full executive power, 
including the command of the army and navy. Before the meeting 
of the first parliament the council might also issue ordinances 
which should have the force of law nntil parliament could take 
action upon the same. In general, pai'liament was to be the sole 
law-making body, having full legislative power, save as limited by 
the terms of the Instrument. Bills were to be presented to the 
protector for his consent. If he saw fib to object, the parliament 
was bound to consider his opinion, but he had no right of absolute 
veto. His consent, moreover, must be given within twenty days, 
or "satisfaction to the Parliament within the time limited," other- 
wise such acts became law without the 30usent of the protector. 
A new parliament must be elected ever;y three years, and in case 
the proper oflficeis failed to issue the writs within the prescribed 
time, then the sheriff and local officers were to proceed without 
wi'its and hold elections as though writs had been issued. The 
power of dissolution rested with the protector, but no parliament 
could be dissolved until it had been in session for at least five 
months. All who professed "faith in God by Jesus Christ" were 
to be protected in the exercise of their religion as long as they did 
not interfere with others or disturb the public peace, "provided 
this liberty be not extended to Popery or P':elacy." So far there 
is nothing in this constitution which Washington, in all his unself- 
ish integrity and magnanimous confidence in the judgment of the 
people, might not have given under similar circumstances. But 
the meat of the nut, of which all the other forty-one articles are 
after all 0!ily the husk, lies in the XXVII A-ticle, which reveals 
the sa.me old military boot still planted upon the neck of the 



1653] THE PKOTECTORATE ESTABLISHED 739 

prostrate nation, which no amount of polishing or furbishing can 
disguise or make more attractive. By this article it was prescribed 
that a standing army of 30,000 men was to be regularly sup- 
ported by parliament, likewise "a convenient number of ships for 
guarding of the seas;" £200,000 per annum were to be raised 
to meet the ordinary expenses of government, not to be "taken 
away or diminished, nor the way agreed upon for raising the same 
altered, but by the consent of the Lord Protector and the 
parliament." Ostensibly the Instrument of Government was 
designed "to set up a sort of strictly limited monarchy and a 
strictly limited parliament, mutually dependent on each other, so 
as to prevent the danger of either party becoming supreme." In 
reality it did nothing of the sort, but put almost unlimited power 
into the hands of Cromwell. When parliament was in session, a 
check, apparently, was placed at his side, but the fact that parlia- 
ment was forbidden, without his consent to reduce the standing 
army, enormous for these times, and that the army was placed by 
formal law entirely under his control, completely nullified the 
independent authority of parliament, and, in reality, reduced any 
opposition which it might offer, to the nature of advice or at 
best a protest. The council, however, adopted the Instrument, 
and, on the 16th of December 1653, Cromwell was solemnly inau- 
gurated in Westminster Hall. 

There were not lacking those who saw through the tissue of the 

new constitution which the friends of Cromwell had given the 

Commonwealth. Some of them were the politicians 

Reception of , , , , , 

theimtru- who had opposed the dissolution of the Long Parlia- 

ynent. ■: ° 

ment, but they were without influence and the new pro- 
tector could afford to ignore them. But when Harrison and the 
officers of his way of thinking declared that they had been deceived 
and cheated, the case was more serious, and the protector at once 
clapped Harrison and his friends into prison and deprived them of 
their commissions. Whatever others might think, Cromwell evi- 
dently had taken the Instrument of Government seriously, and 
lienceforth there was to be no trifling with his dignity or question- 
ing of his motives. In general, the nation apparently was satis- 
fied: if the Stuarts could not be brought back, the mad career of 



730 THE PROTECTORATE [ 



Olivee Chomwell 



revolution at least was stayed and a strong hand grasped the 
reins. 

The Instrument of Government provided that the first par- 
liament should meet in the following September. During the 
intervening months Cromwell turned to the task of jus- 
trationof tifvins; the new arrangement in the minds of the public 

the Protector. -jo o ^ ■>- 

by the efficiency and moderation of the measures which 
he adopted for the peace and relief of the country. The Dutch 
War naturally demanded his first attention. The war had never 
been popular; its advocates had advanced the plea that it was to 

favor British commerce, but its effect had been to destroy 
^"? ?-'^t4''*^ British commerce almost entirely. Moreover, Crom- 

Dutch War, -^ ' 

well himself had never favored the war, so that when 
the victory of February 1653 had been followed by a second vic- 
tory in June, and a third in July, in which Van Tromp was killed, 
the way was open for closing the war upon terms most favorable 
to England^ Unfortunately, however, during the days of the 
Nominated Parliament, the proposal of terms on the English 
side lay with the Council of State where Cromwell had by no 
means held a free hand, although his influence was always great, 
and the council would be satisfied with nothing but a complete 
submission and amalgamation of the Netherlands with Eng- 
land, This was later changed to a proposal of alliance against all 
states which sustained the Inquisition, in which the two great 
Protestant naval states were to indemnify themselves by formally 
partitioning the colonial fields of Asia and America; England was 
to surrender her East India Company's possessions to the Dutch, 
and they in turn were to assist England in driving the Spaniards out 
of the Western Hemisphere. Finally, however, even these demands 
were pared down to a simple defensive alliance, a recognition of 
England's supremacy in the British seas, and a secret clause by 
which the Estates of Holland were to exclude the House of 
Orange permanently from the stadholderate. Claims for dam- 
ages which had been incurred by both sides, not only during the 
war, but during the long period of trade rivalry preceding, were, 
for the most part, to be adjusted by commissioners. On April 19, 
1654 the treaty was ratified by the protector. 



1654] REFORMS OF CROMWELL 731 

The Dutch War and the negotiations which followed, reveal the 
approach of an era in whicli the advantages of trade and commerce, 
rather than religions enmities, push to the front as the 
athmid"' g^^at causB of international struggle. The old objects 
of warfare have not yet been altogether put aside, but 
they no longer dominate. The light of the morning is in the 
words in which Cromwell outlined to the Dutch commissioners the 
advantages of a policy of alliance for both people : The interests of 
both nations consisted in the welfare of commerce and navigation; 
the industry of the Dutch ought not to be prevented, but the 
English could not be deprived of the advantages which nature had 
given them in the way of good harbors and geograjDhical situation ; 
the world was wide enough for both peoples; if they could only 
"thoroughly well understand each other," their countries would 
become the markets of the world and dictate their will to Europe. 
With the same clear-sighted energy the protector turned to 
domestic affairs. The church naturally first attracted his atten- 
tion. Here anarchy had reigned for years. Each con- 
and the gregation followed the form or service which it chose, 

and livings were held by all sorts of clergymen, from 
the followers of the old Anglican form to the radical Independents. 
Parliament had practically replaced the Covenant by the "Engage- 
ment," by which a clergyman simply bound himself to be faithful 
to the Commonwealth. Many abuses had crept in, however, and 
many unworthy men had taken advantage of the absence of super- 
vision to secure livings. But this was no part of Cromwell's 
idea of toleration, and in March 1654, he created by ordinance 
a commission of thirty-five members, called "Triers," to pass upon 
the personal character and sufficiency of all nominees for livings. A 
second ordinance, issued in August, appointed commissioners in each 
county to eject men of scandalous lives who already held livings. 

The protector also turned his attention to the courts and 

appointed a mixed commission of lawyers and laymen to consider 

the present abuses and difficulties, and reduce the over- 

Legai grown bulk of the Common Law to some practical 

form. To relieve the Court of Chancery, which had 

escaped the "Root and Branch" work of the Nominated Parlia- 



732 THE PROTECTORATE [ 



Oliver Cromwell 



ment, he empowered otlier courts to try equity cases until the 
docket had been cleared. 

In Ireland Cromwell steadily pursued the later English jDolicy 
which had been inaugurated by Chichester and Falkland. His 
lieutenant, Fleetwood, and after him Cromwell's son 
Cromwell's Henry, ruled with an iron hand. The men who were 
**"'^*i implicated in the earlier massacres were hanged or 

banished and their estates confiscated. The confisca- 
tions at the expense of Catholics continued steadily to the 
advantage of the English soldiery and the Adventurers. Crom- 
well would "meddle with no man's conscience," as he wrote 
to the governor of New Eoss in 1649, yet apparently in his 
scheme of toleration he had no place for the Mass. The 
Catholic- religion was virtually proscribed and the persecu- 
tions of the priests continued. The Irish parliament, also, was 
abolished. 

The same vigor was shown by the protector in the administra- 
tion of Scottish affairs. Here the Rump had placed an able lieu- 
tenant in George Monk, who after the disaster off 
and Scot- Dungeuess had been transferred to the navy where he 
served during the rest of the war as "General at Sea," 
and proved himself as able as upon land. After the close of 
the war Cromwell sent him back to his old command in Scotland, 
where much rough work still remained to be done in the reduction 
of the Highland clansmen who had rallied about General Middle- 
ton and were making a forlorn stand for Charles 11. Monk proved 
himself an adept at mountain warfare and it was not long before 
he compelled the last clansman to lay by his claymore and wait for 
better times for his beloved "Charlie." Presbyterianism was 
dethroned and all Protestant faiths were placed upon an equal 
footing before the laws. By the bigoted Scots, however, toleration 
was regarded with little favor; nor could the benefit which Scot- 
land received from the Navigation Act, or the right of free trading 
with the English colonics, the substantial results of which were 
manifested by an unexampled era of peace and prosperity, make 
the Scotsman see in the Cromwellian rule anything more than "a 
wicked paltering with error and sin." 



1654] crojuwell's first parliament 733 

For nine months, now, the affairs of the new government had 
been progressing most snccessfully. An unpopular war had been 

ended; abroad the English flag was respected as it had 
Crf^^weWs ^^^ been since the days of Elizabeth'; at home peace and 
admtnistra- q^iet reigned; the laws were honored, and trade and 

commerce were rapidly recovering from the paralysis 
whicli had attended the Civil War. The supreme test of the new 
constitution, however, was yet to come. 

The first Protectorate parliament met on September 3, 1654. 
The protector had carried out his agreement in good faith, and 

the new parliament represented fairly the several 
firstpariia- Protestant factions of the state: Presbyterians, Koyal- 

ists, Eepublicans, and Cromwellians. Bradshaw and 
Haselrig were there, and Vane was denied a seat only by his own 
reluctance to submit to the Protectorate. As soon as the mem- 
bers were assembled, the Presbyterians and Republicans joined 
forces to strike at the root of Cromwell's authority, claiming the 
right to revise the Instrument of Government, and denying to the 
protector the coordinate authority sanctioned by the existing 
settlement. Cromwell reminded the members of the conditions 
upon which they had accepted office, and insisted that each mem- 
ber should pledge himself not to attempt to alter the form of gov- 
ernment. About two hundred and thirty members signed the 
agreement; the rest were excluded from the House. The most 
of those who refused to pledge themselves were Independents. 
The Presbyterians were thus left in control, and, while not nomi- 
nally attacking the Instrument, yet continued to discuss its terms, 
specially limiting the provisions for securing religious toleration, 
and going out of their way to take up the case of a demented 
Quaker, named Biddle, who had managed to give special offense by 
the way in which he aired his views. Five lunar months had now 
passed and nothing had been done. Even the voting of much- 
needed supplies for the army and navy had been neglected, and 
Cromwell in despair determined to take advantage of the right 
conferred upon him by the Instrument,^ and on January 22, 
1655, dissolved his first parliament. 

^ Croinwell has been accused of ■violating the Instrument here; but 



734 THE PROTECTORATE [oliver Cromwell 

Cromwell had acted technically within the powers conferred 
upon him by the new constitution. Yet he lost many friends. 

The unlovely jangle of the military spur had been heard 
^b^auf^^'^i ^g^i^) ^^1^ however small the sympathy which men 

might have with the conduct of the parliament, it was 
apparent to all that any parliament could be but a paper parlia- 
ment so long as a word from the protector was sufficient to send 
the members packing again. Plots broke out among the Levellers 
in the army. The royalists were greatly encouraged; in March 
it was necessary to use the military to put down an insurrec- 
tion at Salisbury. The leaders were executed. Merchants, also, 
refused to pay the imposts, on the plea that the government had 
no right to levy taxes without an act of parliament, and appealed 
to the courts. But Cromwell promptly dismissed the judges 
whose loyalty he had reason to doubt, exactly as Charles I. had 
done in the days of Hampden and ship money. He went a 
step beyond Charles or even Wentworth, and virtually placed all 
England under martial law; dividing the country into eleven dis- 
tricts and placing over each a major general, responsible only to 
the protector and the council. A tax of ten per cent was levied 
upon the royalists to defray the expenses of the new military gov- 
ernors and their assistants. Cromwell, further, turned upon the 
Episcopalian clergy, whom he, with justice perhaps, suspected of 
sympathizing with the recent revolts, and forbade them to teach in 
a public or private school, or to preach or to administer the sacra- 
ment, or to use the Prayer Book. The major generals also carried 
things with a high hand, organizing the militia, collecting taxes, 
and imprisoning the enemies of the government without resort to 
civil forms, and in a short time peace and order were restored. 
Englishmen had refused to accept the compromise which the 
army had offered, which, as Cromwell doubtless wished, in time 
might possibly have established a constitutional government in 
fact as well as in theory; they were now compelled to obey Crom- 
well as a military despot. 

Blackstone, and after him Hallam, long ago pointed out that by English 
law a "month" was always to be taken as a lunar month unless other 
wise specified. 



1654-1656] THE SPANISH WAR 735 

In the autumn of 1654 war had virtually begun between the 
Commonwealth and Spain, The causes of the war are not easily 

understood. The weakness of Spain was well known to 
The Spanish Em'opean statesmen; Spain, moreover, was a Catholic 

country, and Cromwell's Puritan conscience would feel 
none of those qualms which disturbed him when news was brought 
of the victories of Blake and Monk over the Protestant Dutch- 
men, But there were other reasons for war which any modern 
statesmen would wholly approve, such as the stubborn refusal of 
Spain to recognize the right of England to trade in the West Indies 
even with her own colonies, or the refusal to exempt Englishmen 
from the laws of the Inquisition, The latter fact alone, perhaps, is 
sufficient explanation. For whatever vacillation Cromwell may 
have shown in supporting other principles which are supposed to 
be characteristic of his foreign policy, upon this point he was 
always definite: Protestant Englishmen abroad were not to be 
interfered with on account of their religion. The fact, further- 
more, that France agreed to grant toleration to Englishmen, is 
sufficient to explain the French alliance of 1657 which gave England 
Dunkirk, and brought a division of the New Model to the conti- 
nent to show Frenchmen and Spaniards what war was like. 

The chief incidents of the Spanish War are soon told. In 
1655 Penn and Venables took Jamaica and added it permanently 

to the list of English possessions in the New World. 
ineidents/jf In February 1656, Spain formally declared war, and in 
War. ' April 1657 Blake performed his famous feat at Santa 

Cruz which rivaled Drake's exploit of 1587. Pass- 
ing the batteries which guarded the entrance he sailed into the 
harbor, and, after a stubborn fight, burned and sank a fleet of 
sixteen Spanish galleons, and then retired without the loss of 
a ship. 

In the meanwhile Cromwell had been compelled by the needs 
of his foreign war to summon another parliament. It met in 

September 1656 and may be fairly taken as represent- 

The second .^ ./ x 

parliament ing the height of Cromwellian influence. The vigorous 

foreign policy of Cromwell, the declaration of war by 

the Spanish king, the exploits of Blake, a procession of twenty- 



736 THE PROTECTORATE [ 



Oliver Cromwell 



eight cart loads of bullion, the plunder of the Spanish treasure 
fleet, grmding and creaking through the streets of London on 
their way to the Tower, had revived again traditions which had 
come down from the days of Elizabeth, and appealed powerfully 
to the patriotic sentiment of all classes; at the same time sub- 
stantial peace and prosperity at home had gone far to reconcile 
many of the malcontents to the new order. Nevertheless the 
council found it necessary to deny seats to about one hundred of 
the returned members whose anti-Cromwellian sentiments were 
regarded a's a menace to good order, leaving the new parliament 
so thoroughly Cromwellian that for several months nothing hap- 
pened to disturb the placid current of routine. The members 
showed their sympathy with the protector by voting large supplies 
and declaring plots against his life to be treason. Cromwell on 
his part was not behind them in giving evidence of his good faith 
and confidence. When they refused to approve the act of the 
council which had created the "government by major generals," 
he promptly recognized the right of interference as prescribed in 
the Instrument and withdrew the major generals. 

In March 1657, however, all earlier eif usions of confidence were 

outdone. The parliament, as a part of a general plan known as 

the Petition and Advice^ hj ^Y\l\G\l it was j)i"oposed to 

^'"^S ^/Py^^ reorganize the ffovernment somewhat more in accord- 

and Adnce. ° ° 

ance with ancient English traditions, formally agreed 
by a vote of 123 to 63, to confer upon the protector the title of 
king. Cromwell was not only to assume the title of king with 
power to nominate his successor, but parliament was henceforth to 
consist of two houses,- — an elected "House of Commons," and a 
second, styled the "Other House," the members of which were to 
be appointed by the king for life. Additions to the Council of 
State were to be made by the king with the consent of the council 
and parliament. It was also proposed to give to the government 
a yearly income of £1,300,000 to be continued during the life of 
the king. Toleration was to be assured to all except Papists, 
Prelatists, and blasphemers. 

Out of respect for his old comrades in arms, who had no wish 
to serve a "King Oliver" any more than they had to serve a King 



1657] THE PETITION- AND ADVICE 737 

Charles, Cromwell refused to accept the royal title, and his par- 
liament dropped the offensive word from the new constitution. 

In this form Cromwell accepted the Petition, and 
mmfiT™" ^^^ J^"^® ''^'^' 1'^^^' ^^^"'^ solemnly installed for the 
ttwpiimon second time as Lord Protector of the Commonwealth. 

Cromwell was now king in everything except in name; 
the title, the very crown, had been offered to him and it had 
been his to decline it. Strange to say, moreover, Presbyterians, 

Royalists, and some of the nobles, honestly desired to see 

Reception of 

thePeti- the change wrought. A kmg, it was said, was neces- 
twn. . 

sary in order to govern England ; all the laws and insti- 
tutions presupposed a king, depended on a king, and could not be 
fitly administered without a king. But the army said. No; and 
even Cromwell must bow to the army. So he pushed the tempting- 
bauble from him, for he dared not step out from the strong plank 
upon which he had stood so securely these many years, and trust 
himself to a party composed of men who had been for the most 
part his enemies. But even as it was, he soon found he had taken 
a step which he could not retrace. Lambert, the author of the 
original Listrument, claimed that he had been deceived and 
refused to take the oath of allegiance. But more serious trouble 

followed when the parliament reassembled for its sec- 

Dissoiution Olid sessioii ill January 1658. The members who had 

of the second 

parliament, been excluded from the first session had been allowed 

to return. A number of Cromwell's friends, also, had 
been transferred to the new House of Lords. Thus an assembly 
which six months before had offered a crown to Cromwell, was 
transformed into a body pugnaciously hostile to kings and lords on 
principle. Haselrig opened an attack upon the new House of 
Lords; the Commons sustained him, refusing to recognize "the 
Other House" or transact any business with them. The govern- 
ment was at once thrown into confusion; everything came to a 
standstill ; and on February 4 Cromwell in great disgust dis- 
solved his second parliament. He warned the members that they 
were only playing into the hands of the king of Scots ; as for him- 
self he was sick of the whole business, and declared with a pathos 
which has the ring of sincerity: "I would have been glad to have 



738 THE PROTECTORATE [- 



Oliver Cromwell 



lived nnder my woodside, to have kept a flock of sheep, rather 
than undertake such a government.'" 

The strong man, in short, was breaking under the load which 
he had assumed. Ills which he had contracted among the north- 
ern lowlands in the campaign of Dunbar had ever since 

Death of i ^ * ■, • „ 

Crornweu. been hard upon Ins track. On August 6 his favorite 
daughter Elizabeth Claypole died. The unremitting care 
which he had given her in her last illness, and the new burden of 
grief which entirely overwhelmed him, were too much for his 
failing strength; he followed her by just four weeks, dying on his 
lucky day, the double anniversary of Dunbar and Worcester. 

Thus passed the man whom the world is just beginning to 
understand. He was a practical, hard-fisted, iron man, yet 
capable of tenderness almost feminine. In will, he 
Cromwell'''^ was gigantic, inflexible; in intellect, slow, unimagi- 
native, but profound ; in thought, conservative, yet 
progressive; in purpose, sincere and upright; yet, in spite of all, 
he was doomed at last to stand alone, because in an age of fanati- 
cism he was the only fanatic who remained sane. In his idea of 
religious toleration he was a man of the nineteenth century. He 
succored the Quakers. He tried to save the poor madman 
James Naylor, who imagined himself the Messiah, He tried to 
protect the Unitarians, from whom the ordinary Puritan drew 
back in horror as blasphemers ; he allowed Episcopalians to live in 
peace; he permitted the Jews to return to England, for the first 
time since their expulsion in the reign of Edward I. He promised 
Mazarin that, as soon as possible, he would secure toleration for 
Catholics also. As Cromwell belongs to the nineteenth century 
in his ideas of religious toleration, in his political toleration he 
belongs to the twentieth century. "He was a republican who had 
no hatred for monarchy as an institution; he was a monarchist 
who helped to establish a republic as the only refuge from the 
tyranny of a bad king. He was a radical who hated radicalism, a 
Leveller who hoped to bring back a House of Lords." At a time 
when the revolution was forcing all sorts of political theories into 
luxuriant growth, he remained without theories himself, and 
sought to select from the wreckage of the older system, only 



PERSONAL TRAITS OF CROMWELL 739 

what was durable, and what promised best to restore order and 
peace and hberty to the England which he loved. It is no marvel 
that men who thought that they held a monopoly of truth, 
regarded him sometimes as wicked and self-seeking, sometimes as 
a time-serving hypocrite, but always as lukewarm. 

He is described as of "great and majestic deportment and 
courtly presence." He loved the manly sports of hunting and 

horsemanship. He loved music, delighted in art, and 
traits^"'^ was fond of surrounding himself with learned men. 

On public occasions none could be more dignified; yet 
he knew also how to unbend when within the inner circle of 
friendship; he could make doggerel verses to amuse his children, 
could crack rough Jokes or smoke a pipe with his friends. He 
hated affectation. "Paint me as I am," he said to Lely, "rough- 
ness, pimples, and warts, otherwise I will not pay you a farthing." 
Like Washington, "his temper was terrible when aroused;" then 
strong men trembled in his presence. In religion he was sincere 
and ardent ; in private life he was simple and loving. He had 
nothing of Napoleon's vanity in his public achievements; he 
thought little of his place in history; he was not "the child of 
destiny," but simply "a mean instrument to do God's people 
some good." 

At forty-two he was a plain Huntingdonshire squire. Yet at 
forty-three he took up the study of war and soon secured a place 

among the world's greatest captains. At fifty he 

turned to politics and soon won for himself a place 
among "the most vigorous and resourceful of statesmen. " Guided 
by the sure instincts of a great, strong nature, enthusiastic, yet 
always practical, he advanced step by step to that position from 
which for him. there was no escape save death. It is true that he 
won his place by the sword, that he ruled by the sword; and yet 
only the SAVord could save England from anarchy and secure the 
fruit of that liberty for which a generation of Englishmen had 
struggled. 

On the death of Cromwell, his eldest son Kichard passed quietly 
to the vacant post of protector. Thurloe, the protector's secre- 
tary, who had most to do with bringing forward the new Crom- 



740 THE PROTECTORATE [richakd Cromwell 

well, boasted "that not a dog wagged his tongue, so great was 

the calm." And yet the threat to the peace of England lay in 

the nentral character of the man whom Thnrloe had 

Richard -, ■ „ n -kt 

Cromweii, donc most to bring forward. No man could be more 
unfitted for the post for which he had been chosen. He 

knew nothing either of war or politics; he was idle, easy-going, 

and without enthusiasm, indifferent to any business more serious 

than hunting or horse racing. 

In January 1659, the third protectorate parliament assembled. 

The members from England and Wales had been elected by the 
old constituencies as represented in the Long Parlia- 

The third 

protectorate ment, rotten boroughs and all. The thirty members for 
January, ' Ireland and the thirty for Scotland, however, had been 

chosen as in the first two protectorate parliaments. 
The parliament in the main favored the new protector, but the 
army was disappointed that one should be placed over it who 
was no soldier, and who did not even belong to the "godly kind." 
Fleetwood and Desborough, the one, Richard's brother-in-law, and 
the other, his uncle, proposed to take from the protector his mili- 
tary powers by making Fleetwood commander-in-chief. Richard 
demurred; the Commons sought to strengthen his opposition. 
But, when the officers came to him and offered him the choice of 
the support of the army or the parliament, he was forced to yield, 
and on April 22 dissolved his parliament, even before it had voted 
the usual supplies. 

The dismissal of the third protectorate parliament was a fatal 
mistake. Richard was not strong enough to face the storm which 

an attempt to levy taxes without parliamentary sanc- 
retdofeT^ tion would Create. So a parliament of some kind must 
^rotcctorate ^® Called, and in May the Rump, which CroniAvell had 

so summarily driven out in 1653, was allowed to return 
to Westminster. Thus the revolution had begun to retrace its 
steps. Vane, Bradshaw, Scot, and Ilaselrig, ardent republicans 
all, became at once the men of the hour. This undoubtedly was 
what the army wanted, for the old republican spirit, which Oliver 
had repressed with so much difficulty, was once more supreme 
among the soldiers. Tlie Rump very naturally addressed itself to 



1659] THE RUMP RESTORED 741 

the restoration of tlie republic, and after making arrangements to 
pay the protector's debts, insisted that he lay down his office, and 
he, apparently nothing loath to be rid of an honor which had 
brought him only trouble and sleepless nights, left Whitehall on 
May 25, never to return. He retired into private life, too 
harmless to be molested in the several revolutions which followed, 
and died at last at a green old age in 1712. 

While the Eump was thus winding up the affairs of the pro- 
tectorate in a bloodless counter revolution, the war which repre- 
sents Cromwell's foreign policy was coming to a successful 
close. In 1657 Cromwell had agreed to send over 
Endo^span- gj^ thousand of his Ironsides to ioin the French in 

vih War. "^ _ 

an attack upon what was left of Spain's possessions in 
the Low Countries. Mardyke was soon taken and in 1658 the vic- 
tory of the Dunes forced the surrender of Dunkirk, and the next 
year Spain made her peace with France by the Treaty of the 
Pyrenees. England received Dunkirk, and France, Roussillon and 
Artois, as the spoils of the war. It has been customary to censure 
Cromwell's intervention as a serious blunder. The results cer- 
tainly favored France far more than England, and possibly laid 
the foundations of the future power of Louis XIV., raising up in 
the place of moribund, bankrupt Spain a new rival to England in 
the France of the eighteenth century. Yet only prophetic wis- 
dom could have foreseen this issue in the middle of the sixteenth 
century. All the traditions of the century past pointed to Spain 
and not to France as the foe of England ; to cripple Spain was to 
assure the future not only of England but of Protestant Europe. 



CHAPTER VI 



THE STUART RESTORATION" 



THE COMMONWEALTH, 1659, 1660 
CHARLES IL, 1660-1667 



The restoration of the Stuarts followed the abandonment of 
the protectorate as a political necessity. The Rump, reduced to 

about forty members, was again in power, and although 
The Refttora- j^ straightway assumed all its former airs, declaring 
icai neces- the acts of the protectorate illegal, and commanding 

the major generals to refnnd the taxes which they had 
collected, no one took the fussy little oligarchy seriously, nor 
could any stretch of friendly imagination regard it longer as a 
parliament, or devise any theory by which it might be regarded as 
a legal government. By whom then should the authority of the 
state be exercised? Should a new Instrument of Government be 
struck out and some new experiment of military rule be tried? If 
the great Oliver were still alive, this might be possible; but he 
was gone and the mould was broken. Moreover, in the collapse and 
utter prostration which had followed the over-tension and over- 
excitement of revolution, in the complete failure of so many 
schemes for curing the ills of church and state, the nation had 
lost confidence in itself. More serious still, it had lost that splen- 
did moral energy which had inspired it to attempt great things, and 
now sighed for the old tutelage. Hence, long before the year 1659 
had run out, the hopelessness of attempting to continue the Com- 
monwealth was generally apparent, and the most had begun to 
look for the return of the Stuarts and the reestablishment of the 
old monarchy as the quickest way out of a bad business; — the 
surest way of establishing order and confidence upon a permanent 
foundation. 

742 



1659] MOXK MARCHES UPON LONDOIST 743 

In the Slimmer some dignity was imparted to the Rump by the 
prompt suppression of a royalist rising in Cheshire, where Sir 
George Booth, a Presbyterian, and a member of the 
eiecWmof Long Parliament, had managed to get a considerable 
Octoi)6?'i6o9 fo^'ce into the field. Lambert, however, was the real 
hero of the war, and an ill-advised attempt to remove 
him and Desborough, revealed the slender platform upon which 
the new power of the Rump actually rested. Lambert simply 
marched his men down to AYestminster, and turned the self-styled 
parliament out with even less ceremony than Cromwell had used in 
1653. Lambert and Fleetwood then essayed to play over again 
the role of the Great Protector. But the feeble imitation of the 
roar of the dead lion only excited derision and contempt. The 
authority of the self-appointed leaders was defied; their right to 
collect taxes denied; and at last even their own soldiers grew rest- 
less and disgusted with the farce. Then the leaders fell into an 
aimless wrangle among themselves, and finally in December Fleet- 
wood in sheer desperation again brought back the Rump. 

In the meanwhile disquieting rumors were reaching London 
from Scotland, where George Monk was still in command, sup- 
ported by the old Commonwealth army of occupation. 
marches from He was a silcut man, who knew how to keep his coun- 

Scotland. . -,. . . 

sels; a simple soldier, neither politician nor fanatic, but 
shrewd enough to see what the outcome of so much indecision and 
weakness must be. At the outbreak of the Civil War he had been 
in the king's service in Ireland, had crossed over with the army in 
1644, and, after the defeat at Nantwich, with many others had 
taken service under the parliament. His ability was recognized 
by Cromwell; he rose ra^iidly and bore no unimportant part in 
establishing the prestige of the Commonwealth. He had steadily 
supported Cromwell but he was not pleased with the drift of affairs 
at Westminster after the protector's death and was also not slow 
to express his disapproval of the conduct of the generals. On 
January 1, 1660 he crossed the border. Lambert advanced to 
Newcastle to hold the Tyne, but his soldiers refused to support 
him and showed their ill will by frequent desertions ; and when 
in addition to these discouragements Lambert learned that Fair- 



744 THE RESTOKATION [charlesII. 

fax had raised the Yorkshire militia in his rear, he saw that 
resistance was useless and allowed Monk to march upon London. 
When Monk entered the city, he found it in wild uproar. Its 
representatives had been among the Presbyterian majority who had 
been expelled from the Long Parliament in 1648 and 
Monhre- the citv council had now taken the broad ground that, 

stores the ■' ... 

LongPariia- gjnce tliev were denied representation m parliament, 
me7t,t. •' -^ . . 

they would pay no taxes until the vacancies had been 

filled. Monk saw the justice of their claim; he felt also that only 
by a new parliament could the existing difficulties be settled. On 
February 16, therefore, he declared for a free and full parliament 
and compelled the Rump to call back the excluded members. The 
moderate party were thus again brought into power. They pro- 
ceeded to appoint Monk commander-in-chief of the army and 
Montague admiral of the navy, imprisoned Lambert and Vane, 
ordered the election of a new parliament, and then, March 16, 
1660, voted their own dissolution. Thus at last the Long Parlia- 
ment by its own act, was properly dismissed into history; and 
for the first time in twenty years the legal voters of England had 
an opportunity to express their opinions in a free general election. 
There could be little doubt as to what kind of government the 
new parliament would favor. But no effort was made to control 
the elections or commit the members. Monk had kept 
TheDeciara- j^jg Q^yj-^ counsels, declaring that if his shirt knew what 

tionof Breda. . . 

was in his head, he would burn his shirt. Charles in 
the meanwhile was at Breda in North Brabant, surrounded by a 
little court of exiles who had continued to cling to the Stuart 
House in the midst of its misfortunes. Their turn was at last 
coming. Cliarles, however, was under the control of wise coun- 
sellors, and on April 4 he issued from his asylum the famous 
Declaration which still farther cleared the air and helped to win 
the confidence of the hesitating. He promised a general pardon, 
but left exceptions to be made by parliament as well as the final 
disposition of confiscated estates. He also pledged himself to 
support a measure for the full payment of the arrears which were 
due Monk's soldiers and to receive them into his service. He 
promised further that "no man should be disquieted for differences 



1660] THE CON-VENTION" PARLIAMENT 745 

of opinion in matters of religion whicli do not disturb the peace of 
the realm," and that he would accept any act which parliament 
might pass with this object in view. 

The new parliament, which assembled on the 25th of April, is 
known as the "Convention Parliament" because the writs had not 

been issued in the king's name and to that extent were 
hv^.i^Mth technically irregular. The Lords, with the exception 
PaHiament ^^ *^® Mshops, who had been legally excluded by 

statute, assembled in their old accustomed place. Here 
the cavalier spirit naturally ran high; but in the Commons, since 
the Malignants, or radical cavaliers, were still disqualified, the 
more conservative royalists, represented mostly by the Presby- 
terians and moderate Episcopalians, were in the majority. The 
Declaration of Breda, in which Charles had virtually left the future 
adjustment of affairs to parliament, particularly appealed to this 
body, who, while it wished to 'get away from Cromwellianism, 
had no wish to see the principles of Laud or Strafford reinstated. 
In spite, therefore, of an attempted revolt by Lambert who had 
escaped from the Tower, in spite of the protests of Haselrig and 
Ludlow, in spite of the tracts of Milton who frantically urged 
upon the people the advantages of the republican form of govern- 
ment, in spite even of the efforts of Fairfax and Manchester who 
would hold Charles off until more definite pledges had been 
secured, the parliament declared that "according to the ancient 
and fundamental laws of this kingdom, the government is and 
ought to be, by King, Lords, and Commons," and invited Charles 
Stuart to assume the royal authority. 

On the 28th of May IGGO, his thirtieth birthday, Charles 
entered London. He is described as tall, dark, with prominent 

features; not handsome, yet fascinating in manner and 
Character brilliant in speech, abounding in patience and good 
Charles ii. humor, and of marvelous tact. But under all this 

charming exterior he concealed a nature which was 
selfish, unscrupulous, deceitful, and capable of the grossest 
debauchery. For ten years, however, he had now been before the 
public, and these baser elements of his nature were well under- 
stood. Cromwell had said, when asked to treat with him, "He is 



746 THE RESTORATION [charles II. 

SO damnably debauched, that he would ruin us all." Yet Charles 
was no fool; under an exterior which made him appear always 
trifling and indifferent, he concealed a natural sagacity, certainly 
an unusual trait in a Stuart. He had also been tutored to good 
purpose by the events of his chequered career, and had no wish 
to "set out on his travels again." He had studied well his 
father's career, and saw that his father's mistake lay in allowing 
himself to appear as the responsible agent in carrying out his 
policy of repression. He deliberately adopted, therefore, the 
wiser, if not the more honorable policy, of throwing all respon- 
sibility upon his ministers, and keeping himself in such a position, 
that he might at any time disclaim their acts. This policy he 
had already inaugurated when he had so heartlessly left poor 
Montrose to suffer for his devotion in 1650. 

At his coronation Charles made Edward Hyde, his old tutor 
and the companion of his wanderings, Earl of Clarendon and 

advanced him to the position of chancellor. At this 
J/cMef*'''' ^^"^® Hjde was fifty-one years old. He had been a 

member of the Long Parliament and had voted for the 
attainder of Strafford. But like .Falkland and others, he was 
devoted to the Anglican Church, and had quarreled with the 
radical reformers over the Root and Branch Bill, thus making the 
first division in the Long Parliament and ultimately creating a 
king's party. Of others who received the new king's favors were 
Monk who was made Duke of Albemarle, and Charles's brother, 
James Duke of York, who was made Lord High Admiral. James 
was a convert to Catholicism and as devoted to religion as the king 
was indifferent. With him was associated the Commonwealth 
admiral, Montague, who was made Earl of Sandwich. Anthony 
Ashley Cooper, another Commonwealth man, was made Chancellor 
of the Exchequer and raised to the peerage as Lord Ashley. 

The Convention Parliament at once took up the business of 
adjusting the kingdom to the new order, proceeding upon the 
lines suggested by the Declaration of Breda. An Act of Indem- 
nity and Oblivion, covering all offenses committed since the out- 
break of the Civil War, prepared for the proclamation of a general 
amnesty, from which only those were exclnded who had brought 



1660] THE CONVENTION PARLIAMENT 747 

the late king to his death. The bodies of Cromwell, Ireton, Pride, 
and Bradshaw were taken from their graves and hung in chains 

from tall gibbets, while London roared with applause. 
IiwCmwen- ^J"^' Blake, who had died on the way home from Vera 
tneuf^"^'^" Crnz, the mother of Cromwell, and others were torn 

from their resting places at Westminster and thrown 
into a common pit. Then, having glutted their ghoulish vengeance 
on the dead, the avengers turned upon the living. Twenty-nine 
were held for trial. Harrison and nine others were condemned 
to death. Martin was imprisoned in Chepstow Castle where he 
died in 1681. Haselrig and Lenthall were declared incapable of 
office for the rest of their lives; Whitelock was left to die in 
obscurity. Lambert and Vane, who were not regicides, were 
spared for the present. The marvel is that more did not suffer; 
but Charles took uo delight in blood-shedding for its own sake. 
He was shrewd enough, moreover, to see that moderation would 
make him no enemies while an unseemly vindictiveness might. 

A far more difficult question to settle was the disposal of the 
claims to the forfeited estates. Those who had fought for the 

father and shared the exile of the son snrely ought 
lands'^^'^^^'^'^ ^°*^ ^^ ^® ^®^^ '^^ penury. Yet the new king, after the 

promise of indemnity and oblivion, could not deprive the 
present holders of lands wliich had in most instances been obtained 
by open purchase. Moreover, the men who had restored Charles 
were in many cases the very men who had profited most by the 
parliamentary forfeitures. In general no rule was established and 
the individual cavaliers were left to fight the matter out in the 
courts and get what redress they could. To them the Eestoration 
had offered only a cold cake; bitterly they commented on tbe 
humanity of the Convention Parliament; the- Act of Indemnity 
they called "an Act of Indemnity for the king's enemies and an 
Act of Oblivion for his friends." 

The difficult task of paying off and dismissing the old Crom- 
wellian soldiers was next taken in hand and entrusted to Monk. 
He performed his work so well that in a very short time the 
veterans of the Commonwealth wars had returned to their old 
peaceful occupations. The prejudice against a standing army was 



748 THE KESTORATIOJSr [charlesII. 

as strong as ever, and it was at first intended to disband all the 

regiments, but an outbreak of a small band of Fifth Monarchy 

enthusiasts, who by the violence and suddenness of 

Theanmi of their attack terrorized London for a few hours, impressed 

the ((iiiiinon- _ -*■ 

«'<"'""''•■'■- upon the government the importance of having a body 
of disciplined men within call. Three regiments, 
therefore, in all about five thousand men, were retained. These 
regiments were Monk's own regiment, the famous "Cold Stream 
Guards," a newly organized regiment known as "The King's 
Horse Guards," and a third regiment stationed as a garrison at 
Dunkirk. They were uniformed in the famous scarlet coat, which 
had already been worn by Cromwell's Ironsides in the French 
campaign. With the artillery they formed the nucleus out of 
which has developed the modern regular army of the British 
Empire, In order still further to remove all temptation to revolt, 
parliament directed the dismantling of the walls and fortresses of 
all the inland towns of England. The walls of Oxford, York, and 
Chester, however, were spared for the sake of the loyalty of these 
cities to the late king. 

The Convention Parliament was by no means a body of mere 
blind reactionaries. They had no wish to restore again the 
machinery of the old arbitrary government of Charles 
Fruits of the J which the Long Parliament had swept away. The 
Star Chamber and the Court of High Commission were 
left to rest in their graves. No effort was made to revive ship 
money or benevolences or forced loans ; no one raised the question 
of the right of the crowii to levy taxes without the consent of the 
nation given through its representatives. Even the Privy Council 
might not venture again to issue its ordinances as laws upon sub- 
jects where parliament had spoken. So, also, the vast body of out- 
worn feudal precedents which Charles I. had sought to revive in 
the interests of his treasury, were now formally and finally abol- 
ished; and the old medieval system of subsidies was abandoned 
for the system of regular assessments which the Commonwealth 
had introduced. To indemnify the king for the surrender of 
feudal revenues, he received au hereditary excise on liquors, which 
then amounted to about £300,000. Thus, although the Common- 



1660] THE CAVALIER PARLIAMENT 749 

wealth had gone, the work of Coke and Eliot, of Hampden, Pym, 
Vane, and Cromwell, was not to be undone. England had at last 
shaken herself loose from feudalism and the middle ages; her 
people had established their right to make their'own laws and levy 
their own taxes for the needs of government. The entire tissue of 
prerogative theories had been riven and blown away in the storms 
of the Revolution. Hereafter, when law is violated by the crown 
or its officers, it is clone by fraud or open violence, but not under 
the pretext of superior right. 

On December 29, ]660, Charles dissolved his first parliament, — ■ 

his "healing and blessed parliament" as he called it; and on May 

8, his second parliament met. The royalist reaction in 

The CctiVcilicr 

Parliament, the country had now progressed so far that very few of 
the moderate men of the first parliament had been 
returned. Instead, a body of bitter reactionaries came together, 
"more jealous for royalty than the king, more jealous for Episco- 
pacy than thebishoi)S,"and determined to take vengeance on their 
old enemies and ignore all the acts of the Long Parliament which 
had not been sanctioned by the formal assent of King, Lords, and 
Commons. Of the acts which had been passed before 1642 and 
had received the sanction of the king, only two were repealed; but 
the repeal of these two, the Triennial Act and the act which 
excluded the bishops from tlie House of Lords, laid the foundation 
of the second Stuart Despotism. Two other acts also revealed the 
drift of the new parliament. It was declared that the command 
of the militia lay in the hands of the king and, further, that even a 
defensive war against the king was unlawful. 

So eager was the new parliament for vengeance that the gov- 
ernment could with difficulty persuade it to confirm tlie various 

^ conciliatory measures of the last parliament. It was 
Execution of . ^ ^ 

Sir Henry determined to have blood; and Lambert and Vane 
Vane, 1662. 

were brought to trial on a charge of treason. Lambert 

escaped the death penalty, only to be imprisoned for life, but 

Vane was condemned to a traitor's death. That more victims did 

not suffer was due, not to the temper of parliament, but to Charles 

himself, who had no sympathy with what his over ardent friends 

called "justice." 



750 THE RESTOKATION [charles II. 

The burning question of the hour was still the old question of 
church settlement. The majority of the nation, perhaps, would 

have been well pleased with a settlement upon the basis 
'^cttumenuyf ^^ some such plan as Cromwell had favored, known as 
theRestora- h^q "Comprehension," because it comprehended all the 

various Protestant bodies, leaving the bishop to be 
simply an overseer of the church, associated in his diocese with a 
council of presbyters but shorn of all authority as lord. Charles 
had practically declared for such a scheme when he was playing 
for the support of the Presbyterians. As far as his own religious 
preferences were concerned he leaned towards Catholicism; his 
dissolute life, moreover, put an insurmountable barrier between 
himself and the leaders of the Presbyterian party. Presbyterian- 
ism, he had said, was "no religion for a gentleman." If he must 
choose, Episcopacy from his point of view Avould be the least 
objectionable. Charles, therefore, now that he had won his throne 
again, could have no other motive save the honor of his word, 
which never weighed heavily with him, in resisting the efforts of 
Cilarendon and his Cavalier Parliament, who were determined to 
restore the whole Anglican system. Their purpose was embodied 

in a series of tyrannical acts known as the "Clarendon 
don Code!"''' <^'ode."i Of these the "Corporation Act," passed in 

1061, required all local borough officials to receive the 
communion according to the rites of the church, take the oaths 
of supremacy, allegiance, and nonresistance, and renounce the 
Covenant; the "Act of Uniformity," passed in May 1(362 , required 
all beneficed clergy to use the Prayer Book, and further threatened 
to deprive of their livings all who, not having been ordained by a 
bishop, should fail to secure such ordination before the 24th of 
August following, — St. Bartholomew's Day. 

When the fatal day of August arrived, some two thousand men, 
rather than be faithless to conscience, turned their backs upon 
their pleasant homes and went out, many of them with families, to 



iThey were The Corporation Act, 1661, The Act of Uniformity, 1662, 
The Conventicle Act, 1664, and The Five Mile Act, 1665. See Gee and 
Hardy, pp. 594-623. 



1662] THE DISSENTERS 751 

penury and actual want; for beyond a few months' salary no other 
relief was given. The two thousand clergymen included Pres- 
Th fou d- hyterians, Independents, and Baptists, "probably the 
hodfof^ most zealous ministers of the gospel in England," 
"Dissenters." henceforth to be merged in the great body of "Dissen- 
ters. " Of dominant Puritanism we hear no more. Even the 
Presbyterian renounced all hope of enforcing his scheme of gov- 
ernment upon the nation, and looived only for some form of tolera- 
tion by which he might be left in peace in his peculiar form of 
worship. 

It was impossible, however, to keep such men from preaching 
or attempting to minister to those of their flock who cluug to 
them in their misfortune. Yet even here the hostility 
ofBUsxnZs ^^ ^^® Cavalier Parliament followed them. The "Con- 
venticle Act" of May 1064 declared that any meeting of 
more than five persons for religious worship in ways other than 
those prescribed by the church was an "illegal conventicle;" the 
first ofl'ense to be punished by fine and imprisonment, the second 
ofirense by a hea\'ier fine and longer imprisonment, and the third 
olfense by a fine of £100, or transportation for seven years. The 
Conventicle Act was followed in October 1G65 by the "Eive Mile 
Act" which forbade the dissenting clergyman to teach in any school, 
or to come within five miles of any corporate town or any place 
where he had once been pastor. The local magistrates, that is the 
Cavalier squires, who were empowered to convict without a jury 
and condemn even to the sentence of transportation, administered 
the acts with cruel zeal. Spies and informers did not hesitate to 
use the cloak of piety in order to ply their nefarious trade. The 
Dissenters would not yield their right of worshiping Cod in their 
own way. Thousands were cast into the filthy and unhealthy dens 
which passed for prisons, where the weak and the infirm quickly 
succumbed and the strong came forth after a few months 
vanandme ^^'^^^cn in body if not in spirit. John Bunyan, the vil- 
'^•oartm^' lagc pastor of Bedford, passed eleven years in the vil- 
lage jail. It was during this period that he sent forth 
his "Pilgrim's Progress" to comfort and direct his fellows in 
persecution on their way to the Celestial City. The lot of the 



752 THE RESTORATION [charles il. 

Quakers was particularly bard. Their gentle manners, coupled 
with the most indomitable obstinacy in refusing to take the ordi- 
nary court oaths, at first puzzled and then roused the fury of the 
country squires. Some four hundred of them at one time lay in 
the London jails, and a thousand or more in the other prisons of 
the country. 

Laud himself could hardly have done more. Yet there is this 

difference to be noted between the work of Laud and that of 

Clarendon. The Clarendon Code was due not so much 

The wor'k, of . . . . . , . . 

Laud and to religions aiiimositv as to political animositv. The 
Clarendon. •j x ./ 

Laudian persecutions were carried on without parlia- 
ment and contrary to the laws, but the Eestoration persecutions 
were carried on by the special sanction of parliament and under 
the laws. The Laudian persecutions were supported by the king 
and his bishops, and continued in spite of the protest of the 
nation; the Eestoration persecutions were supported by a power- 
ful national party who had their way in spite of a good-natured 
king, who was too shrewd to interfere, but who of himself would 
have preferred toleration. Laud, moreover, aimed to make tlie 
church independent of parliament, but the authors of the Eestora- 
tion persecutions were interested rather in asserting the authority 
of the restored parliament over those elements of the nation which 
they justly regarded as responsible for the excesses of the Civil 
War. Although eager to restore the church as the buttress of 
Cavalierism, they had no desire to put the clergy back upon the 
pedestal from which the Puritans had once throwm them down. 
The very parliament which passed the Clarendon Code, in 1662 
took from the Convocation the right of ecclesiastical taxation and 
vested it in the House of Commons, where clergymen were not 
allowed to sit; thus merging the last of the group of powers, which 
had constituted the dignity of the once great First Estate, in the 
fiscal and political powers of the body which had come to repre- 
sent the common nation. 

The age in fact was anything but a religious age. The nation 
was drifting rapidly from its old moorings, and coming to look 
upon all theological divergences, not by any means with indiffer- 
ence, but as a matter of personal politics rather than personal reli- 



166l] THE RESTOEATIOlSr IN IRELAND 753 

gion. The real religion of the governing class, the only religion 
in fact which ever took hold upon the imagination of the Cavalier, 
Decline of ^^^^ ^ ^^^'^ '^^ king-worship, which all but apotheosized 
We'ilP'^'^ the late king and forced the church, in return for sup- 
Eugiand. port and protection, to take up the propaganda of mon- 
archy as the form of government specially pleasing to God, with the 
accompanying doctrines of divine right, passive obedience, and 
nonresistance. 

In Ireland the restoration of royal authority was a simple mat- 
ter, but the conflict of cross interests made the final adjustment of 

claims and titles even more difficult than in England. 
The Restora- 
tioninire- In the first place there was the great garrison of Crom- 

land. o to 

wellian veterans and their friends, who had settled in 
the most choice parts of the island. Then there were the loyal 
Cavaliers who had sacrificed all for the king, and who naturally 
expected to be rewarded to the extent, at least, of getting back the 
lands which they had lost in consequence of their loyalty. In the 
third place there were a tew royal favorites as the king's brother 
James Duke of York, Albemarle, and others, to whom the 
king had made large promises of Irish lands ; and finally there was 
the older Celtic Catholic population, who had reason to think that 
their loyalty to the Stuarts deserved protection at least. The 
high-minded Ormond, the Lord Lieutenant, nobly wrestled with 
the problem. He dared not disturb the old Cromwellian soldiers, 
lest he rouse them to open revolt, and by the Act of Settlement, 
1(361, confirmed them in their present possessions as well as the 
English Adventurers who had settled under the pledge of Charles 
I. A new adjustment, four years later, evened matters up some- 
what between the Cromwellian settlers and the royalists ; but the 
Catholic Irish population were left in possession of less than one- 
third of the island. An even more serious matter for Ireland was 
the dissolution of the union, an act which committed England to 
her later Irish policy, with all the vexing questions growing out 
of it, depriving Ireland of the benefit of the ISIavigation Act and 
preparing the way for a systematic and deliberate policy of fatten- 
ing English farmers and merchants at the expense of Ireland. 
This policy began to bear fruit in 1605 when the English parlia- 



*^54 THE RESTORATION [charles 11. 

ment forbade the Irish to export to England either cattle, or meat, 
or butter, thus cutting off Ireland from the possibility of develop- 
ing as a grazing country, for which both soil and climate specially 
adapted her. The restoration of the Irish parliament further 
prepared the seeds of future bitterness by placing the Celtic 
Catholic population at the mercy of laws made by the Protestant 
minority, who now held the great part of the lands of the island 
and controlled the local parliament. The Anglican Church, 
hated alike by Irish Presbyterian and Irish Catholic, was also 
brought back to add still another element of discord and misery in 
the future. Yet in spite of the wrongs of the people, in spite of 
disturbances caused by "Rapparees" and "Tories," ^ for twenty- 
five years after the return of the Stuarts the land was substantially 
at peace and there was much prosperity for the Protestant settlers 
of the north, although little for the subject Celts of the south and 
west. 

The Scots had never liked the Cromwellian union, partly 
because Cromwell had maintained it in a somewhat arbitrary way, 
and partly because the Scots were still by tradition 
suspicious of the English. The abandonment of the 
union, therefore, followed at once upon the withdrawal of Monk's 
army, and Scotland again became a separate state, hound to 
England only by the possession of a common king. Like Ire- 
land she lost the benefit of the Navigation Act, the privilege 
of trade without restriction in the English colonies as well as 
freedom of trade with England, but she got back her precious 
ministry and her parliament. All acts passed subsequent to 1G32 
were swept away by the "Rescissory Act." The bishops were 
restored, but without their powers or the fatal Liturgy of Laud. 
The royalists, however, were not willing to stop with mere reac- 
tionary legislation. The blood of Montrose was still unavenged, 
and, to satisfy the cry for vengeance, Argyll was arrested in Lon- 
don and hurried back to be put to death upon the nominal charge 
of complicity in the death of Charles I. The Presbyterian clergy, 



1 Bands of desperate outlaws, who sought to avenge the wrongs of 
the Irish people by preying upon the settlers of English blood. 



1663] THE EESTOKATION" IN SCOTLAND 755 

who had protested agamst the promise of toleration given in the 
Declaration of Breda, found themselves like their English brethren 
compelled either to accept the hated Episcopacy or to face a life 
burdened with persecution or, at best, penury. ' All political power, 
both administrative and legislative, passed into the hands of a com- 
mittee, nominated by the crown and composed of a set of men 
among whom the ruffians, Middleton and Lauderdale, soon became 
cousj)icuous, Mdiose native coarseness and overbearing brutality 
were not improved by a habit of almost perpetual drunkenness. 
"It was a mad, roaring time." Middleton and Lauderdale let 
loose their troopers to hunt down the Covenanters among the 
western hills and moorlands. The spirit of these Covenanters, 
however, was quite different from that of the inoffensive Quaker 
or even the nonconformist of the south. Persecution did not 
make them meek ; the preacher's cloak as often covered a sword 
or pistol as a Bible, and the stealthy gathering for prayer was 
more than once the prelude to a fierce battle with the king's men. 
The spirit of such men could not be broken, even when the High- 
landers were sent into their homes to dragoon them into submis- 
sion. 

The Restoration made little difference in the foreign policy of 
England so far as alliances were concerned, but its spirit was very 

different. Clear-headed Englishmen, including Claren- 
The iip><torn- ^q^i himself, already saw the menace to England of the 
e!'"i"'!'i""^ growing power of France, but Charles saw only the 

immediate benefit which the support of the French 
monarchy promised him. In 1662 he married the Catholic princess, 
Catharine, who was a sister of the king of Portugal, the old ally 
of France against Spain. Bombay and Tangier came to England as 
the price which Portugal paid for this alliance. The English 
were not pleased with the increase of their Catholic allies, and 
when, the same year, Charles parted with Dunkirk, the Great Pro- 
tector's last acquisition, selling it to the French for £250,000, 
even the blindest of royalists felt some chagrin in comparing the 
subservient position assumed by his beloved king with that inde- 
pendent dignity which Cromwell had maintained in the face of 
other nations. 



756 THE RESTORATION [ 



Charles II. 



Charles had received popular support in an attack which the 
Convention Parliament had made upon the carrying trade of 

Holland in renewing the old "Navigation Act" of the 
commercial Rump. Charlos, also, was determined that his sister's 
Holland. SOU should be restored to the Stadholdership, from 
\rar, 1665- which the Dutch Republicans, the brothers De Witt, 

were keeping him. Old trade Jealousies, too, hardly 
allayed by a treaty which Clarendon made in 1662, burned as 
fiercely as ever. Hostilities soon began both in Africa and in 
America, wherever English and Dutch merchants or colonists came 
into contact. Clarendon struggled against the war spirit, but the 
merchant influence was too strong for him, and for two years the 
English and Dutch carried on a desperate contest on the seas. 
Tlie English navy was paralyzed by mismanagement and knavery, 
and vast sums were squandered to no purpose. The heroes of tlie 
war on the English side were the veterans Rupert and Albemarle; 
on the Dutch side De Ruyter. The war closed with the peace of 
Breda, July 1667, leaving England in possession of New Amster- 
dam, which had been taken by Admiral Holmes early in the war. 
It was rechristened New York in honor of the king's brother, the 
Lord High Admiral, and at once took a high place among the 
important English colonies in the New World. Charles's ally, 
Louis of France, had supported the Dutch in the war, first because 
the merchant oligarchy who ruled Holland and opposed the Prince 
of Orange, were French both in policy and in sympathy, and 
second because he did not wish to have his English protege grow 
so strong that he could not be controlled. 

While England was engaged in the Dutch War, there occurred 
one of those visitations, always mysterious in an era when little was 

kno-wii of the simplest laws of sanitation, but to-day 
pjaueTees I'eadily ascribed to the open sewers, lack of drainage, 

polluted water, and filthy tenements, the common 
features of life in a European city down to the present century. 
In the summer of 1665, it is estimated, over one hundred thou- 
sand persons perished in London; whole families were swept 
away; business was abandoned and all who could, fled the city. 
The streets were deserted by day, and at night the silence was 



1666, 1667] THE GKEAT FIRE 757 

broken only by the dismal creaking of the dead-cart, and the yet 
more dismal cry of the driver, as from time to time he stopped 
his cart and summoned the terrified watchers within to bring out 
their dead. In marked contrast with the conduct of the Episco- 
palian clergy, the dissenting clergymen, Presbyterian, Bap- 
tist, and Independent, returned to the doomed city to minister 
to their old parishioners in their day of mourning. Some even 
preached from the vacant pulpits of the deserted city churches. 
When the terror had passed, and the skulkers returned, the only 
reward which parliament vouchsafed to the heroic men who had 
braved death in the performance of duty was the "Five Mile 
Act." 

London had hardly recovered from the paralysis which attended 
the plague, when there fell upon the city another calamity, which 
was in all probability a blessing in disown ise and prevented 
Fire, Septem- the return of the pestilence. At two o'clock of tlie 
morning of September 2, 1GG6, a fire, the result of a 
mere accident, broke out in a bake shop in Pudding Lane; a 
violent gale was blowing, and the flames rapidly swept through the 
city. The fire raged for four days, burning eighty-nine churches, 
including St. Paul's Cathedral, and 13,200 houses, leaving two 
hundred thousand persons homeless, and subsiding only after 
four-fifths of Old London had been laid in ashes. Curiously 
enough the Catholics were charged with burning the city, and a 
monument was erected to commemorate the awful crime. The 
charge rested upon no evidence; the Dissenting ministers or the 
king might have been accused with equal justice. It shows how 
deeply the old enmity and suspicion, born of the sixteenth century, 
had eaten into the very blood of the nation. Hatred of Catholics 
was the birthright of the new generation of Englishmen. 

Thus far Clarendon had in the main been responsible for the 

conduct of the Eestoration government. He was an able man of 

affairs and a loyal minister ; but he was not a great 
The fall of -^ „ . . . it. 

Clarendon, statesman nor a successful politician. The Presby- 

terians could never forgive him for the Clarendon 

Code; the royalists could not forget his honest adhesion to the Act 

of Indemnity. From Charles, however, he might reasonably 



758 , THE RESTOEATIOlSr * [cHAnLEslI. 

expect a cordial support; his long tried friendship, his real service 
to the Stuarts in exile, his no less real servif e in organizing and 
establishing the restored government upon a solid basis, could not 
be ignored by a man who had any sense of personal honor. There 
was little, however, in common between the high-minded royalist, 
who drew his conceptions of duty and loyalty from the age of 
Elizabeth, and the dissolute and easy-going king of thirty, who 
was more bent upon getting funds with which to keep his mis- 
tresses in good humor than he was upon preserving England's 
prestige abroad or equipping fleets to fight her battles. Claren- 
don, moreover, never took any pains to conceal his disapproval of 
the unclean creatures Avho surrounded the king, nor of the license 
of the court which the king so shamelessly encouraged. An open 

breach between the king and his faithful minister had 
Jionofinduv^'^'^^^'^^^ "^ December 1G62, when the king, taking 
S^*'' advantage of the adjournment of parliament, published 

a declaration softening somewhat the harshness of the 
recent Act of Uniformity by permitting individuals to violate the 
law without punishment. Charles had little sympathy with the 
humble Dissenters, but he hoped to protect the prominent Catholics 
of his court. When parliament met again, it at once compelled 
the king to withdraw his declaration. In this first serious quarrel 
between Charles and parliament, Clarendon took sides against 
the king and openly opposed him in the House of Lords. As 
long as Clarendon had the support of parliament, however, the 
king feared to interfere with his minister. But a late misfor- 
tune of the Dutch War, in which a Dutch fleet had entered the 
Medway and burned an English fleet at Chatham, the disgraceful 
sale of Dunkirk, for both of which Charles was to blame and not 
Clarendon, the Great Plague and the Great Fire, for which neither 
was to blame, turned the popular tide against the minister. Even 
the parliament, royalist as it was, had grown weary of a man who 
had declared that "its power was more, or less, or nothing, as the 
king pleased to make it. " When, therefore, on the 10th of October 
1GG7, Clarendon was impeached at the bar of the House of Lords 
as the scapegoat for the disasters of the Dutch War, he stood 
aloue. Of the twenty-one articles brought against him, no one 



1667] THE FALL OF CLARENDON 759 

was really serious ; and yet, knowing the men with whom he had 
to deal, he saw that his only safety lay in flight. On the con- 
tinent he spent his last days in completing his celebrated work, 
"The History of the Great Rebellion. " He died in 1674. 

The fall of Clarendon marks the close of a distinct period in 
the reign of Charles II. Clarendon had sought to restore the king- 
ship; but to restore the old kingship of the Tudor period was no 
longer possible, for the king must henceforth govern in the pres- 
ence of a parliament. At first this was not understood; -the parlia- 
ment was more loyal to the kingsliip idea than Charles himself. 
But "the honeymoon of the Eestoration was now over and only an 
uneasy wedlock remained;" the Cavalier Parliament had lost its 
"impulsive loyalty^" and soon degenerated into the parliament 
known by the less honorable, but no less merited, name of the 
"Pensionary Parliament," whose loyalty could never be depended 
on by the king without a preliminary course of careful nursing 
and manipulation. The king on his part shaped his policy more 
and more definitely towards the restoration of the Catholic 
Church, while the parliament rallied what little sense of self- 
respect remained, to defy him and impeach his ministers. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE BIRTH OE THE WHIG PARTY 

CHARLES IL, 1667-1685 

The history of the last eighteen years of the reign of Charles 
II. turns upon the efforts of the king, Jirst, to secure toleration 
for the Catholics, and second, to defeat the schemes of a 
fvM%arii powerful party of reaction, which proposed to exclude 
his brother from the succession on account of his 
adhesion to the Catholic faith. The purpose of Charles appeals 
powerfully to the love of fair play of the present age; especially 
since, in order to secure the equal standing before the laws of 
his co-religionists, he was willing to confer the same boon upon 
Protestant Dissenters. But unfortunately, when Charles saw that 
he could not gain his ends through regular constitutional methods, 
he resorted to the devious ways of secret treaties with the French, 
and thus in the minds of Englishmen identified himself and his 
cause with the sins of Louis XIV. against the public law of 
Europe, and brought on a powerful anti-Catholic, anti-French 
reaction, which in time gave birth to a new political party sworn to 
exclude Catholics of whatever degree from all part in the govern- 
ment at home, and to check the aggressions of Louis XIV. abroad 
by setting bounds to the further expansion of France. 

After the fall of Clarendon Charles undertook for a time to be 
his own chief minister. He found the council, however, which 
now consisted of about fifty members, too unwieldy for 
"CaJjaf," easy manipulation, and dropped into a habit of con- 
sulting informally a group of special favorites, a council 
within the council, before submitting matters of importance to 
the larger body. Five men enjoyed this special confidence during 
most of the time between the imj^eachmcnt of Clarendon and the 
beginning of the career of Danby; Clifford, Arlington, Bucking- 

760 



1668] THE CABAL 761 

ham, Ashley, and Lauderdale. When arrayed in this order, the 
initial letters spelled the unfortunate word "Cabal," which was at 
once fastened upon the junto as appropriately descriptive of their 
aims and underhand methods. Of the five, two, ClifEord and 
Arlington, were Catholic at least in sympathy ; one, Lauderdale, 
was the renegade Covenanter who since 1663 had been virtually 
dictator in Scotland; one, the cleverest of them all. Lord Ashley, 
was a renegade Commonwealth man, who as plain Anthony Ashley 
Cooper had served in the Barebones Parliament, a sort of political 
infidel who had tried all parties and believed in none; and last, 
the son of the old favorite of Charles I., George Villiers Duke of 
Buckingham, "the maddest, wittiest, most profligate man in Eng- 
land." ^ Men of such widely divergent principles, and of no prin- 
ciples at all, could never form a strong coalition; they could not 
form a ministry in the modern sense, for they rarely acted together 
and never had the confidence of parliament; they did not consti- 
tute a secret council, for the king never trusted them all at once. 
They were simply a group of favorites such as had surrounded 
Edward II. or Eichard II., who owed their power largely to 
personal and individual influence over the king. They M^ere 
the kind of men who are commonly produced by revolution, 
thorough-going spoilsmen, bound to no policy, always watching 
for the least veering of the wind, and ready to trim sail accord- 
ingly. 

Soon after the Cabal came into power, Louis XIV. began to 

push forward his ambitious scheme of enlarging France at the 

expense of those territories of Spain, Lorraine, and the 

The Triple -p,. ,-111 -, 

Alliance Empire, which lay between him and the Rhine. He 
found a plausible pretext for seizing the Spanish 
Netherlands in the plea that these lands, in consequence of the 
death of Philip IV. of Spain, had "devolved" upon his daughter 
the French Queen, to the exclusion of her younger brother, the 
sickly Spanish king, also a Charles 11. In the war which fol- 
lowed, known as the "War of Devolution," the French easily 

' For Macaulay's brilliant portraits of the members of the Cabal, see 
"Essay on Sir William Temple. " 



762 BIRTH OF WHIG PARTY [chables II. 

overran Flanders. The Dutch, however, had no desh-e to see the 
powerful French monarchy advance to their very doors, and in 
1668, through the offices of Sir William Temple, succeeded in 
securing an alliance with England and Sweden against the further 
aggressions of France. The menace was sufficient ; Louis had his 
own colonial possessions to protect; he had no wish to enter into 
a war in which the two most powerful navies of Europe would be 
arrayed against him; and by the Treaty of Aachen, 1GC8, grace- 
fully restoring a great part of the territories which he had seized, 
ostensibly yielded his claims upon the Spanish Netherlands, Yet 
Louis had changed, not his purpose, but only his method of 
attack. He saw that before he could seize the Spanish Nether- 
lands he must crush Holland, and accordingly, to attain 

The Secret o .^ ; 

Treaty of this end, he first bought Sweden and England out of 
the Triple Alliance; he also secured the non-interfer- 
ence of the Empire by promising upon the death of his sickly 
brother-in-law, the Spanish Charles H., to share with Leopold, 
the emperor, the plunder of Spain. In England the course of 
events greatly favored Louis. In 1668 Charles, supported by 
the entire Cabal, attempted to persuade parliament to enact a 
"Comprehension Bill," designed to "comprehend" some of the 
nonconformist bodies within the established Church and secure 
general toleration. Parliament, however, not only rejected the 
Comprehension Bill, but in 1670 reenacted the Second Con- 
venticle Act, and increased the severity of some of its measures. 
Charles, therefore, in despair of securing toleration for Catholics 
by constitutional measures, after a secret consultation with the duke 
of York, Arundel, and the two Catholic members of the Cabal, 
determined to appeal to Louis. Here was Louis's opportunity, and 
he quickly took advantage of it. In June 1670 the two powers 
signed the secret Treaty of Dover, in which Charles agreed to 
unite with Louis in making war upon the Dutch, and Louis agreed 
to pay him £230,000 per annum and give him control of thirty 
French ships. Charles, furthermore, was to declare himself a 
Catholic, "as soon as the affairs of his kingdom should permit." 
Louis on his part if needed was to support Charles in England 
with six thousand French troops and a further subsidy of 



1672] THE TREATY OF DOVER 763 

£134,000. If Charles of Spain died without male issue, Charles 
of England was to support Louis in seizing the Spanish domin- 
ions, and receive in payment Ostend, Minorca, and certain terri- 
tories in America. Charles was fully aware of the dangerous 
nature of his contract with Louis and carefully kept the secret 
even from the non-Catholic members of the Cabal, tricking them 
with a sham treaty, which was published in 1672 as the real 
Treaty of Dover. 

At the opening of 1672 Louis and Charles were ready to carry 

out their joint plot against the Netherlands and against the laws 

of England. Parliament had not been in session for 

Attempt to 1 1,1 1 • 1 T 

carry out ten montlis and although it had provided liberallv 

terms of o jr j 

Treatiiof for the English fleet before adiournment, additional 

Dover, 1672. „ , r. , i -, . 

funds were necessary for the meditated attack upon 
Holland. At Clifford's suggestion Charles adopted an expedient, 
called "the Stop of the Exchequer," which Colbert, Louis's 
Th.e "Stop great finance minister, had recently used with success. 
£ixciiequer," The plan was to fatten the treasury by the simple expe- 
1672. ' dient of not paying out the interest due upon loans 
which the goldsmiths, the bankers of the era, had lent to the gov- 
ernment on the security of the revenues. Tho money did not 
belong to the goldsmiths but to the people, "widows and 
orphans" many of them, who had entrusted this money to the 
goldsmiths in the capacity of bankers. The result, however, was 
not exactly what Charles had planned; the depositors were ruined 
of course, but the credit of the government, also, was shattered. 
The panic was so great, that two days later Charles had to promise 
that at least one-half of the accrued interest should be paid. 
Nevertheless, the "locking of the Exchequer" left in the treasury 
about £1,300,000 for present need. For this brilliant financial 
operation Clifford was raised to the peerage and appointed Lord 
High Treasurer. 

On March 15, Charles undertook a still more unpopular 
measure, in issuing a second Declaration of Lidulgence in which 
he "suspended the execution of all and all manners of penal laws 
in matters ecclesiastical against whatsoever sort of nonconformists 
or recusants." In this, unlike the attempt of ten years earlier, 



764 BIRTH OF AVHIG PARTY [Charles II. 

Charles was supported by his chief ministers; in reward he made 
Ashley Earl of Shaftesbury, and before the year was out also 
Second Dec ^.ppointed him Lord Chancellor. Two days before the 
larawmof Declaration, the Endish Admiral Holmes attacked the 

Indulgence, ' ° 

March 15, Dutcli Smyrna fleet which, unsuspicious of danger, 
was leisurely pursuing its way up the Channel, and 
on March 28, war was declared. It was like a thunder clap from 
a clear sky; the Dutch were un^Drepared and taken entirely by sur- 
prise. The French rapidly overran the southern prov- 
of England inces, and might have taken Amsterdam had they not 
uDon the wasted their time on the less important border towns. 
When they reached the sea provinces De Witt, the Grand 
Pensioner, cut the dikes and by flooding the country forced the 
French to withdraw. The people, however, believed that De Witt 
and his brother, who had been heretofore pronounced in their 
French sympathies, were responsible for the war and its miseries. 
Riots broke out in the cities; De Witt was torn to pieces by a 
furious mob; the government of merchant princes which had 
ruled the country for twenty-two years was overthrown and the 
Stadholderate restored. 

The new Stadholder was William, Prince of Orange. On his 

father's side he was a great-grandson of the famous William the 

Silent ; on his mother's side he was a grandson of Charles 

TViiiiam J ^f England, and after the children of James Duke 

of Orange. o ' 

of York, the next heir to the English throne. He is 
described as a sickly, thoughtful young man of twenty-two; cold, 
unattractive, and distant in manner, but a daring statesman and 
capable of devising and carrying out the greatest political combi- 
nations. Some of his countrymen were for giving up the struggle 
with France altogether, and, putting their families and their 
wealth on board their ships, migrating as a nation to their pos- 
sessions in Java. But William had no thought of turning his 
back upon the dreary little land Avhich his fathers had won from 
the Spaniard ; sooner than yield, he declared to Buckingham, he 
would die on the last dike. 

While the French found themselves thus baffled on the land, 
the Enfflish were not renderino- them much assistance on the seas. 



1672] THE TEST ACT 765 

lo June 1672 the duke of York had barely held his own against 

De Kuyter in Southwold Bay on the coast of Suffolk. In 1673 

the Dutch retook New York and renamed it after their 

Erwiand heroic Stadholder, New Orange.' In August they 
m tlie war. ' ° & j 

won a substantial victory off the Texel. 
At the opening of 1673 the English parliament assembled after 
a recess of twenty-two months. It found its work very definitely 
cut out. The old anti-Catholic feeling was thoroughly aroused, 
and the members began an attack both upon the Declaration of 
Indulgence and upon the Dutch War. They did not question 
the king's right to pardon an individual who had been convicted 
of violating a law, but they denied his right to grant a wholesale 
pardon before the commission of crime; a right which amounted 
virtually to the power of annulling any law which parliament 
might pass Even the Protestant nonconformists joined in the 
protest and refused to accept relief at the expense of the funda- 
mental principle of the English Constitution, which required that 
all laws be made by the consent of King, Lords, and Commons. 
"I had much rather see the Dissenters suffer by the rigor of the 
law, though I suffer with them," said the heroic Alderman Love, 
"than see all the Laws of England trampled under the foot of the 
Prerogative," Charles saw that it was useless to persist; the 
Protestant members of the Cabal, especially Shaftesbury who had 
by this time got some inkling of the real nature of the league 
with Louis, urged the recall of the offensive proclamation, and on 
March 8, it was withdrawn. 

Parliament, however, had no thought of stopping simply with 
the withdrawal of the Declaration. The people were furious and 

parliament determined to strike back at the king and 
Act^^^dth ^^^^ Catholic ministers by passing a "Test Act," which 
'Cab^'i^^^ provided that all persons holding any office under the 

crown, must at once take the oaths of allegiance and 
supremacy, publicly receive the sacrament according to the 
Anglican custom, and disavow belief in transubstantiation. This 
act, unlike most previous acts of the kind, made the test com- 
pulsory and made no exception in favor of peers. The act effec- 
tually put an end to the influence of the Cabal. By the terms of 



766 BIRTH OF WHIG PARTY [chaklesII, 

the Test Act the Catholic members were forced to withdraw. 
Shaftesbury, who was now thoroughly aroused by the trick 
which had been played iii^on him by the sham Treaty of Dover, 
had supported the Test Act, and was dismissed in November. 
Buckingham was dismissed under pretext of the opposition of 
the Commons, but really because he had fallen under the disfavor 
of one of the king's mistresses. The duke of York also, who in 
1669 had publicly announced his conversion to the Catholic faith, 
was debarred by the Test Act and was forced to resign the position 
of Lord High Admiral. This was the most signal triumph of the 
opposition. The next step of parliament, after demolishing the 
Cabal, was to put a stop to the Dutch War, and in 1674 they 
compelled Charles to withdraw from the French alliance and 
accept the Peace of Westminster. 

Louis's plans were working out on the continent with hardly 
better success. Instead of having Holland at his mercy, he had 

found himself ultimately confronted by a powerful 
French- coalition, made up of Holland, Brandenburg, Spain, 

and the Empire, with the possibility that it would 
soon be joined by his late allies. This coalition was the work of 
the new Stadholder, who had devoted all his splendid powers to 
arousing Europe against French ascendency. He had not been 
successful in war, however, and despite his heroic efforts the 
French continued to win victories. Louis might succeed, therefore, 
it he could only keep the English from actively joining the league 
against him. To tliis he gave his whole attention. Sir Thomas 
Osborne, who was made Earl of Danby in 1674 and had succeeded 
to a position of control in the government after the collapse of the 
Cabal, accepted the principles of the Triple Alliance, and prob- 
ably would have led parliament into an active espousal of the 
cause of the Dutch, had not the Protestant parliament feared to 
trust the king with the command of an army, lest he use it to carry 
out the plan, for which they now generally gave him credit, of 
trying to force Catholicism upon England. Louis, however, 
could hardly feel safe against the threatened interference of Eng- 
land, and, to secure Charles, made with him a new secret treaty in 
which he agreed to pay the English king £100,000 a year on 



1676-1678] DANBT 



767 



condition that he make no engagement with any foreign power 
without his consent. The danger, however, was still very great, 
1676. ^^^* *'^® anti-French sentiment of parliament would 

throw all caution to the winds and force Charles to begin 
war, in spite of his promises or the bribes which he had taken. 
In 1677 an English army was actually assembled to be used against 
France, and in November Dauby secured the marriage of Mary, 
the eldest daughter of the duke of York, to Louis's arch enemy,' 
William, the Stadholder. Louis saw, therefore, that it was useless 
to seek to control the foreign policy of England longer, and in 
1678 succeeded in securing the Treaty of Nimwegen, which put 
an end to the war but left in his hands Franche-Comte, the "free 
county" of Burgundy, and twelve of the cities of the Spanish 
Netherlands, including Oambrai and Ypres. 

Danby had been in power now five years. He had managed to 
keep his place by the cleverest time-serving. He had, moreover, 
coolly adopted bribery as a regular means of encourag- 
power.''' ing a reluctant parliament, not only freely using the 
royal patronage, but directly and unblushingly setting 
aside a certain part of the royal income each year for buying 
parliamentary votes. Clifford had used bribery, it is said, as a 
means of influencing parliamentary action, but Danby reduced 
corruption to a system. It is also to be noticed as a curious coin- 
cidence, that aboQt this time the English constituencies ceased 
paying regular salaries to their representatives in parliament. 
Seats were so much in demand at the by-elections that no direct 
pecuniary compensation was necessary to bring forward aspirants 
for political honors; it was pretty well understood that a seat in 
parliament carried with it ample rewards far beyond any petty 
wages offered by tax burdened constituencies. 

By a skillful manipulation of his "system of influence" Danby 
had managed to gather to his support a considerable party, very 
respectable in numbers if not in character, known as the "Court 
Party," whose ostensible platform was the support of the Church 
of England, the strengthening of the royal prerogative, and a 
friendly attitude toward the Dutch. There was little sincerity, 
however, in their pretensions; and their leader did not hesitate to 



768 . BIRTH OF WHIG PARTY [ciiarles 11. 

use his alleged friendship for the Dutch as a means of blackmail- 
ing Louis, even acting as Charles's agent in negotiating the secret 
treaties of this era. The Court Party, however, were 

The ''Court ^yj no means left to have their own way, or to secure 
Party" and -' -^ ' 

n*'*' ''<^''""'*"^ all the plunder for themselves. There had been no gen- 

Party." ^ _ *= 

eral election since 1(361, bnt the change in the temper 
of the country had been reflected somewhat by a corresponding 
change in the temper of many members of the Cavalier Parliament ; 
vacancies also had occurred from time to time and new members 
had been returned who represented even more directly the changing 
sentiment of the people. The struggle over the Declaration of 
Indulgence and the Test Act had also given to the opposition 
some coherence, revealed to the leaders their strength, and fur- 
nished them with a definite platform. In distinction from the 
Court Party they were called the "Country Party." 

The first serious tilt of the Country Party with the government 
occurred in 1675. Danby thought to get rid of the men in parlia- 
ment whom he could not reach by his system of iiiflu- 
reAistance ^^^^® ^^ securing a sort of political Test Act, known as 
Bill April, the "Placemens" or "Nonresistance Bill," which 

26/5. 

proposed to require every officer in church or state, and 
every member of parliament, to declare upon oath, that it was 
unlawful to take up arms in the king's name against the king's 
person or those commissioned by the king, and that "he would 
not at any time endeavor the alteration of the government in 
church or state." The bill was defeated largel}^ by the efforts of 
Shaftesbury, who upon retiring from the council had taken his 
place in the House of Lords, and, putting all his abilities of debate 
and intrigue at the service of the Country Party, had from the 
first been recognized as a leader. He was beaten in the Lords by 
the vote of the bishops, but only to carry on the fight in the 
Commons, where, supported by the opposition leaders, he managed 
to get the two Houses embroiled over a question of privilege, and 
raise such a storm that Charles was obliged to prorogue parlia- 
ment before the bill was put to a final vote. 

In November, four months later, parliament again came 
together; bnt the quarrel was renewed as bitterly as ever, and 



1678] TITUS OATES 769 

Charles quickly adjourned the House, this time for fifteen months. 

The agitation outside of parliament, however, still continued. 

The chief center of disturbance were the coffee houses ; 

Thecoffee ^j^ iustitution which had come in with the introduc- 

housen. 

tion of the new beverage from Turkey. At these 
houses wits and politicians gathered to regale themselves with 
the brain clearing drink, and discuss the issues of the day. In 
December Charles attempted to close the coffee houses on the 
ground that they encouraged "false, malicious, and scandalous 
reports. " But the attempt raised such an uproar that the procla- 
mation was hastily withdrawn. When parliament assembled again 
in 1G77 the Country Party, believing that their strength would 
be greatly increased by a new general election, attempted to force 
a dissolution, but the leaders only got into the Tower for their 
pains. Buckingham, Salisbury, and Wharton were soon released, 
but Shaftesbury was locked up for more than a year. With all this 
by-play, the frequent and prolonged adjournments, the imprison- 
ment of Shaftesbury, Louis had much to do. His money worked 
the secret wires ; — to what extent will never be known. Charles 
was evidently fast losing control of his Long Parliament; yet 
Louis did not want a new parliament, for he well knew that in the 
present temper of the country, its first act would be to declare 
war against France. Charles did not want a new parliament for 
he was equally certain that a new House of Commons would at 
once begin a vigorous attack upon the Catholics. Hence Louis 
bribed freely and Charles was perfectly willing to take his money. 
At this stage of the quarrel a new weapon was suddenly put in 
Shaftesbury's hands. In August, 1678, one Titus Gates, a clerical 

adventurer, who had been first Separatist, then Angii- 
phitof can, and finally a pretended convert to Catholicism, 

came forward with a most astonishing story of a 
Catholic plot, in which Charles was to be murdered and the duke 
of York made king, London was to be burned, the Protestants 
butchered, and the old faith established by French soldiers. Gates 
named, also, a number of people who were privy to the plot, finally 
even the queen herself. The story carried its refutation in its 
very extravagance; but in the excited condition of the popular 



T70 BIRTH OF WHIG PARTY [cuarles li, 

mind, men we're ready to believe anything. Other knavish in- 
formers as Bedloe and Dangerfield also took advantage of the 
general panic, and joined Gates in the profitable trade of swearing 
away the lives of Catholics; the jails were filled with suspects; 
judges browbeat juries into giving verdicts, and a number of 
victims were sent to the gallows. 

When parliament met in October the excitement was still at 
its height, and Shaftesbury cunningly seized the moment to secure 

the passage of a "Parliamentary Test Act," which 
The, fall of excluded "Papists" from both Houses of Parliament. 

The duke of York was excepted on his own motion, 
but only by two votes. Five Catholic lords, also, were sent to 
the Tower. The opposition -then turned upon Danby, and in 
December impeached him upon evidence of a letter furnished by 
the French king himself, who hated Danby and regarded him as 
his enemy. In this letter, acting under the direction of Charles, 
Danby had instructed the English ambassador to ask for money 
for his master. Charles was eager to save Danby and also to pre- 
vent inquiry, which might lead to anything but pleasant results for 
himself, and finding that only a dissolution would do it, dissolved 
the Cavalier Parliament on the 24tli of January 1679. Eighteen 
years of misgovernment, the suspicions connected with the Dover 
Treaty,^ a common belief in the purpose of Charles and his brother 
to restore Catholicism to England by French aid, had long since 
cured the Cavalier Parliament of its gushing royalism. To the 
last, however, it retained its old bitterness against all kinds of 
nonconformists, and no small part of its later enmity to Charles 
was due to the conviction of his intended treachery to the Angli- 
can Church. 

The apprehensions of Charles and Louis were now fully 
realized. When the new parliament came together in March, out 
of nearly five hundred members, there were not thirty who could 
be depended on to support the king. It was well known that 
beside the attack upon Danby, there would be a direct attack 

1 Tlie existence of the secret treaty of Dover was not definitely estab- 
lished until the 19tli century. 



1679] IMPEACHMENT OF DAJSTBY 771 

upon the king's brother and an effort made to exclude him from 

the succession. This to Charles was now the all-important issue, 

and to save his brother, he determined to yield upon 

The third . . 

parliament all minor points, in hope of disarming his enemies by 
conciliation. This policy, so characteristic of the 
third Stuart, will explain the victories of the Country Party dur- 
ing the next few months and the serious opposition which they 
ilnally met in the "Exclusion Bill." 

The impeachment of Danby was therefore permitted to be 
resumed, and although the speedy dissolution of the third parlia- 
ment prevented the trial from running its course, it 
Danby's lasted long enough to establish several new principles 
of grave importance from a constitutional point of view. 
First, it was determined that bishops might sit in the House of 
Lords during a trial which involved the death sentence, but 
might not remain when the time came for passing the sentence ; 
second, that an impeachment might be carried over a dissolution. 
But third and most important, it was determined that a direct 
order of the king might not be pleaded as a valid defense, 
thus establishing the individual responsibility of the minister to 
parliament under the law. Fourth, when Danby, pushed to the 
wall, finally produced a royal pardon, this also was swept a«'ay, 
both Houses declaring that a pardon could not stop an impeach- 
ment. The trial, however, was never completed. The dissolution 
in May left Danby in the Tower, where he remained until 1G84, 
when Charles released him on bail. 

In the second point also Charles bowed to the overwhelming 

majority of the Country Party. He allowed them to attempt a 

government, not of their own, but in their own way. 

Temple's 'i^\^q p;[g^^ ^jjg suogested by William Temple, who had 

xchemc of re- J- '^o J i ' 

constntrtinij returned from his brilliant career as minister to the 

the council. 

Netherlands, to throw all his influence with the Country 
Party. The new council as organized included fifteen great offi- 
cers of state and fifteen gentlemen of independent fortunes. Their 
wealth was to place them beyond the temptation of petty bribery, 
their personal influence and dignity were to save them from the 
petty clamors and attacks of the Commons. The scheme, how- 



772 BIETH OF WHIG PARTY [charlesII. 

ever, did not work very well, because in the first place, a council 
of thirty was too unwieldy, and enabled Charles to resort again to 
the old Cabal methods; in the second place, the members, unlike 
the modern cabinet, were not bound to support any one political 
platform, but held widely divergent views upon almost every topic 
that was presented for their consideration, effectually preventing 
them from adopting any consistent plan; and then in the third 
place, Shaftesbury was made the president. Charles would not 
give him his confidence, and the minister used his office not to 
serve the king but to humiliate and baffle him. 

The third important point upon which Charles yielded was the 

famous "Habeas Corpus Act," "for the better securing the liberty 

of the subject and for preventing imprisonment beyond 

The Udhccxs -, . . 

Corpus A.ct, the seas. Ihis important act was particularly the 
work of Shaftesbury and was long known as the 
"Shaftesbury Act." By it the various subterfuges by which the 
crown officers were accustomed to hinder the getting of a writ of 
habeas corpus were forbidden under severe penalties, and jailers 
were enjoined to obey the writ at once. The custom, which had 
sprung up since the Restoration, of sending political prisoners to 
places outside the jurisdiction of the English courts, as Ireland, 
or the Channel Islands, in order to avoid the writ, was also forbid- 
den. Charles did not like the act, but he was desperately in need 
of popularity, and gave his consent in hope of atoning somewhat in 
the popular eyes for his former misdeeds. 

The compliance of Charles in these less important matters, 

however, did not save him from being compelled to face the attack 

upon his brother. Men were still terrified at the 

The E.rclu- , n » , 

sionBiii. thought of what might happen, should an avowed 

May, 1679. , T^ . li- ■> 

' Papist" like the duke of York become king. In 
vain Charles offered to consent to any moderate measure, which 
would not "tend to impeach the right of succession, nor the 
descent of the crown in the true line." In the presence of the 
terror which had seized upon the nation, the Commons were will- 
ing to deny the doctrine of divine right altogether and on the 21st 
of May 1679, pushed to a second reading an Exclusion Bill, 
designed "to disable the duke of York to inherit the Imperial 



1679] PETITI01«rERS AND ABHORRERS 773 

Crown of England." The second reading was carried by a 
majority of 79 votes, and five days later Charles dismissed his third 
parliament. 

This step Charles had taken by the advice of the inner junto 
of his council ; that is of William Temple, Robert Spencer Earl 
of Sunderland, George Savile Earl of Halifax, and 
^ouci^of Arthur Capel Earl of Essex, who persuaded him that a 
ad-oimvment ^®^ appeal to the country would return a more tract- 
able parliament. Shaftesbury, who though President, 
of the Council was not in the confidence of the king, was furious. 
He swore that he would have the head of the man who had advised 
dissolution; yet when the results of the elections were known, 
it was found that the fourth parliament was going to be even 
harder to handle than the one which Charles had just dismissed. 
Charles did not dare to allow them to assemble at all, and by 
a series of postponements managed to fight off the issue for a 
whole year. 

In October 1679, Shaftesbury was again dismissed from the min- 
istry. Without a government position, and without a parliament, 
for parliament was not then in session, he fell back 
ingofthe_ ^ upon the tactics of Pym in 1640, and inspired a series 
of petitions which began to pour into London from all 
parts of the country, entreating the king to assemble the 'parlia- 
ment in order to transact the business of the kingdom. Some of 
these petitions originated in noisy assemblies, where hot-headed 
agitators thought to frighten the king by a show of violent temper, 
and in December Charles by proclamation reinforced an act of 1661 
against "tumultuous petitioning." The Court Party, also, were 
not idle, and counter assemblies were held and counter addresses 
sent up to London, "abhorring unseemly interference" with the 
prerogative of the king to assemble parliaments when he would. 
Thus arose the names which the two parties now assumed, "Peti- 
tioners" and "Abhorrers," soon to give way to the better known 
"Whigs" and "Tories," which have stuck to them and their 
political descendants ever since. The later names were at first 
nicknames, which ardent orators flung at each other in the heat 
of debate or public denunciation. The word "Whig," or "Whiga- 



774 BIRTH OF AVHIG PAETY [chablksH. 

more," was the name by which the bitter Covenanters, the sour 
faced bigots of southwestern Scotland, were known; while the 
name Tories associated the defenders of James's rights with the 
Irish brigands, who infested the wild regions of Ireland and ter- 
rorized their Protestant rulers by their midnight burnings and 
murders. The names were new, but the parties had existed since 
the fall of Clarendon. 

Lauderdale, true to his later associations in the Cabal, had so 
changed the earlier attitude of the Restoration government in 
The Scots Scotland that in 16G9 he allowed the Covenanting min- 
"st ^'te isters to return to their posts under a special Declara-, 

Indulgence.'^ tion of Indulgence from the king. But the 
hard-headed Covenanters of the western Lowlands did not like the 
Scotch Declaration any better than their English brethren liked its 
southern fellow ; they called it the "Black Indulgence," and refused 
to give up their "field conventicles." The government first tried 
to suppress the illegal meetings through the courts, but failing in 
this, in 1677 sent John Graham of Claverhouse into the Clyde 
valley with a band of 8,000 Highlanders to see what could be done 
by the more direct methods of martial law. Claverhouse, how- 
ever, succeeded no better than the king's justices, and after the 
people had been submitted for two years to the depredations and 
outrageous cruelties of his crew of semi-barbarians, they were 
more defiant than ever. 

A brave and obstinate people had now been irritated beyond 

endurance, and when, on June 3, 1679, Claverhouse himself was 

defeated by an armed congregation which he had 

The Cam- o <=> 

eronian attempted to disperse at Drumclog, it was the signal 

vcvolt, 

for a general rising of the people of the western hills. 
Just one month before, James Sharp, the archbishop of St. 
Andrews, who was the chief representative in Scotland of the 
hated prelacy of the south, had been murdered on Magus Moor 
by a fanatical band of Covenanters. The government, there- 
fore, was not in a gentle mood and determined to crush the 
rebels without mercy. Assistance was asked from England and 
a force of fifteen thousand men was sent over the border in 
response. 



1679, 1680] THE KILLING TIME 775 

Shaftesbury at the time was still a member of the council and 
had used his influence to secure the command of the army for 
James Duke of Monmouth, an illegitimate son of 
Monmouth Charles, a dissolute, reckless young-man, but with many 
Brf*"'' June ^^ ^^^^ father's winning ways ; he was politically a Protes- 
22,1679. tant, and thus in favor with the Country Party who 

were beginning to regard him as a possible successor of Charles. 
Monmouth put down the rebellion with brilliant success, defeating 
the insurgents at Bothwell Brigg, and at once became widely pop- 
ular at home; even in Scotland he won many friends. 

The increased popularity of Monmouth, showed Charles that 
he had made a mistake in sending him into Scotland. He there- 
fore got him out of the country as soon as possible and 

The "Mil- ggj-i^ ij^Q doke of York to take his place. But this was 
irtg time." >■ 

only mending one blunder by committing a greater 
blunder, Scotland in the year 1680 was not the place in which 
to give a free hand to a man of the narrow and vindictive nature 
of James, if he were to win popularity. He set to work at once 
in his own fashion to end Covenanting, giving to Scottish history 
the era which northern historians have grimly named the "killing 
time." The Covenanters, however, did not blanch in the pres- 
ence of torture or execution. In 1680 Richard Cameron their 
warlike preacher-leader, who had been prominent in the earlier 
days of trial, returned and devoted his fiery eloquence to rousing 
the people against the oppressor; denouncing the perfidy and 
cruelty of the king and calling upon the people to draw the sword 
in the name of God. In the famous "Sanquhair Declaration," 
which he issued in June 1680, he proclaimed that the "perjury 
and breach of the Covenant" by Charles and James had absolved 
Scotsmen from all bonds of allegiance. Cameron was finally 
surprised and slain, his armed retinue dispersed, but his fiery 
denunciation of the Stuarts was not forgotten by those who heard 
him, and was to bear its fruit later. 

In December 1679 Monmouth returned to England without the 
king's consent, and the Whig leaders attempted to make the most 
of his passing popularity. Bells and bonfires welcomed him to 
London as the idol of the people. Gossip began to whisper marvel- 



776 BIRTH OF WHIG PARTY [charlesII. 

ous stories about a certain "black box" which contained the 

proofs of his mother's marriage to the king. Shaftesbury and his 

Mo7imouth fi'i^i^tls raised the cry that the brilliant young prince 

^Biack ^^^ ^° ^® dispossessed simply because he was a Protes- 

Bo^" tant. In vain the king protested and in the presence of 

the council solemnly denied under oath the fable of the marriage. 

The people persisted in their belief and, to add to the excitement, 

on June 20, 1680, Shaftesbury accompanied by fourteen prominent 

Whigs, went before the Grand Jury at Westminster and formally 

presented the duke of York as a "Popish recusant." Nothing 

came of this open attack on the duke, however, except to add to 

the disgust of Charles and to arouse anew the hatred of the Tories 

for the Whigs. 

On October 21, 1680, the fourth parliament of Charles 11. was 

at last allowed to assemble. Upon the breakup of Temple's 

•th reorganized council, Halifax, who boasted that he was 

^oTciT^lf neitliei' Whig nor Tory but a "trimmer" between the 

u. and the ^^q factions, had retained the chief confidence of the 
Exclusion ' 

^^^^- king. He now attempted to conciliate the Whig Com- 

mons, by proposing, instead of the Exclusion Bill, that parliament 
should enact that during the reign of a Catholic king no ecclesi- 
astical, civil, or military appointment, should be made without the 
consent of parliament or, when parliament was not in session, with- 
out the consent of a permanent committee of forty-one, appointed by 
the two Houses. But the Commons would have nothing but the 
Exclusion Bill and carried it almost unanimously. To the sur- 
prise of every one, however, the Lords rejected the bill by a vote 
of 63 to 30. 

This victory for the king was the result of a great speech by 

Halifax, who, while admitting the motive of the Exclusion Bill, 

presented the cause of Mary and her able husband ; set- 

Uie'meafof ^^^^S forth that they were both of them Protestants and 

the Exciu- far more closely identified Avith the cause of Protestant 

sion Bill. -^ 

resistance to Catholic aggression than the dissolute 
duke of Monmouth ; that at best the reign of James would be 
short, and then the crown might pass to William and Mary with- 
out doing violence to the cause of legitimate succession. The 



1681-1685] THE SECON'D STUART TYRAKSTT 777 

Commons were not pleased ; they demanded the expulsion of Halifax 
from the ministry, refused to vote any supplies to the crown, 
and attempted to fasten the Great Fire of London upon the 
Catholics. Their storming, however, frightened no one; Halifax 
had effectually divided the councils of the enemies of James and 
broken the solid front of the Whigs. The tide was already turn- 
ing, and when Lord Stafford was sent to the block, the last victim 
of the Gates panic, the crowds at the execution openly expressed 
their belief in his innocence. On the 10th of January Charles 
adjourned parliament and on the 18th finally dissolved it. 

Charles, however, needed supplies and in March ventured to 

summon the third of his short parliaments at Oxford, where the 

royal influence was far stronger than at London and 

The last 

parliament where Shaftesbury would be deprived of much of his 

of (Jhct'Tles 

[I.. March blustcr. But the Whig members, still undaunted, came 

up to Oxford attended by bands of armed followers, 
determined to push the Exclusion Bill at all hazards. Men 
remembered the stirring scenes of 1642, and believed that a new 
civil war was at hand. Charles offered to consent to the perpetual 
banishment of the duke of York and that the Prince of Orange 
should be named as regent, if only James might be allowed to 
retain the name of king. Nothing but absolute and final 
exclusion would satisfy the belligerent Whig majority. On the 
eighth day of the session, Charles, satisfied that the Commons 
would accept no compromise and that they were intent upon rush- 
ing through the Exclusion Bill at whatever cost, dissolved his fifth 
parliament. This was the last of the Exclusion Bill. It was also 
the last attempt of Charles II. to manage a parliament. 

Charles and his Tory friends were now masters of the situa- 
tion; the Whigs had been overthrown; Monmouth's hopes had 
The Tory been destroyed and the duke of York saved. The posi- 
^Thf^econd ^^^^ '^^ Charles at this time has been compared to that 
Tyranny" ^^ ^^^ father in 1629; but in reahty there is very little 
1681-1685. resemblance, save in the despotic character of the next 
and last era of his reign, which is justly called the Second Stuart 
Tyranny. In the first place Charles had a far better cause than 
his father. Moreover, unlike his father, he had a standing army 



778 BIRTH OF WHIG PARTY [charlesH. 

at his command, small but well ordered, and recently increased 
by the return of the Tangier garrison. Louis, also, had become 
alarmed at the prospect of uniting England and Holland under 
the regency of William or the accession of Mary, and had 
hastened to furnish Charles with another subsidy on condition that 
no parliament be called again for three years. Charles was thus 
independent, and found himself able to rule without resorting to 
his father's offensive methods of raising a revenue. But most, 
Charles II. was supported by a powerful political party in the 
nation, whose strength was increasing daily; the result of the dis- 
gust and resentment, which was felt as soon as men fully appre- 
ciated the worthlessness of the disclosures of Gates and his fellow 
informers, and began to understand how Shaftesbury and his sup- 
porters had used these creatures to play upon the terror of the 
populace for partisan ends. 

The Second Stuart Tyranny, however, began very much like 

the first. Charles first issued a Declaration in which he attempted 

to iustify his recent acts, and then proceeded to marshal 

The plose of ti ^ ' i. 

Shaftesbury's the courts to puuish his discomfited foes. The first 
victim was Stephen College, whose only crime was an 
over loose tongue. An Oxford Tory jury convicted him of treason 
and the Tory judge sentenced him to be hanged. Neither Charles 
nor James, however, would rest as long as the archplotter, Shaftes- 
bury, went free. In July Shaftesbury was arrested and thrown into 
the Tower, but the sheriff of Middlesex was careful to secure a 
Whig Grand Jury, and when the case was presented in Novem- 
ber, the Grand Jury refused to bring in an indictment. While 
Shaftesbury was iu prison, vainly calling for the privilege assured 
him by his own Habeas Corpus Act, Dryden, the courtier-poet of 
the Kestoration, brought out his "Absalom and Achitophel," in 
which he painted Shaftesbury, the Achitophel, as a monster of craft, 
deceit, and audacious cunning, while Monmouth, his Absalom, 
is the headless dupe, whom the unscrupulous intriguer leads 
astray. As long as the Whigs ruled in the city, Shaftesbury was 
safe, but in 1681 the court by underhand means secured the elec- 
tion of a Tory mayor, and followed this in 1682 by the appoint- 
ment of Tory sheriffs. Shaftesbury saw that London was no longer 



1683] THE RYE HOUSE PLOT 779 

safe, and made good his escape to Holland, where he died in the 
following January. 

Before his departure from London, Shaftesbury had planned an 

insurrection in Monmouth's favor. But Monmouth did not 

receive the encouragement in the west which was 

House Plot, expected, and the other conspirators failed to act at the 

June, 1683. ,Ti«- ,1 iTiji 1 

last moment; Monmouth was arrested and the scheme 
collapsed. But the next summer, certain overzealous Whigs 
planned to assassinate Charles and James as they returned to 
London from the summer races at Newmarket, at a place known 
as the "Rye House," near Hadesdon in Hertfordshire. The 
princes, however, returned a day sooner than the plotters had 
expected and thus the plot failed. It was the work of a group of 
obscure Whigs, but it was so mixed up with the last conspiracy of 
Shaftesbury that many nobler men were easily implicated by the 
excited Tories and their lives sacrificed. Among Qiem was Lord 
William Eussell, the early leader of the Country Party in the 
Commons, the son of the earl of Bedford, a man of blameless 
character and lamented even by his foes; Algernon Sidney, also, 
who still clung to the old ideas of the Commonwealth. Essex had 
been arrested, but destroyed himself with his own hands, in order, 
it is said, to prevent the trial and so save his family estates from 
forfeiture. The trials, in which the brutal methods of the 
infamous Judge Jeffreys first became prominent, were parodies of 
Justice. Sidney was condemned upon the evidence of an unpub- 
lished treatise in which he commended the insurrections against 
Nero, interpreted by the judges as approving an insurrection 
against Charles II. Monmouth also was arrested, but his father's 
love for him saved him and he was allowed to make a confession 
and retire to Holland. 

While the royal judges were thus hunting the enemies of the 
king to earth, Charles was turning his attention to securing a Tory 
Attack of parliament, upon which he might call when Louis's sub- 
uponthe sidies should cease. The county electors, under the 
charters. influence of the reaction, could be trusted to return 
Tories to parliament; but in the boroughs the right of electing to 
parliament was generally in the hands of the town corporations, 



780 BIRTH OF WHia PARTY [chables II. 

which were not only Whig strongholds but close bodies as well, 
with the right of filling vacancies in the membership whenever 
they occurred. Hence the town corporations remained strongly 
Whig in spite of the gathering reaction and would be pretty sure 
to return Whigs to parliament whenever a call should be issued. 
Judge Saunders, a justice of the Jeffreys type, proposed to Charles 
to recall the charters of the corporations by a writ quo ivarranto, 
and to restore them again with Tory boards. In 1G83, accord- 
ingly, proceedings were begun against London and followed up by 
attacks upon every Whig stronghold of the kingdom. Even places 
like Leeds, which sent no delegate to parliament, and the distant 
American colonies, which could hardly exercise any influence at 
all upon the political atmosphere of England, were compelled to 
give up their charters, so thorough and far-reaching were Charles's 
plans and so determined was he to scotch the Whig serpent. In 
returning the Toryized charters, Charles further reserved the 
right of confirming the elections of municipal officers, and even of 
naming the officers, if the elections were not satisfactory. 

Charles was now as absolute as a king could be who held his 
crown under the forms of law. Yet he could not discard 
altogether the theory of constitutional restrictions. Even Jeffreys, 
who boasted that he had made all the charters "like the walls of 
Jericho fall down flat," had, in spoiling the cities of their time- 
honored privileges, resorted to the forms of law. But although 
in theory a constitutional monarch still, Charles, like the Tudors, 
had reached a point where he need not be overscrupulous. The 
Triennial Act of 1641 had been repealed, but the Second Triennial 
Act, 1664, had again prescribed that more than three years should 
not intervene between parliaments. Charles, however, had no 
thought of burdening himself even with a Tory parliament, until 
it was actually necessary, and directly violated the law by neglect- 
ing to call a parliament in 1684. So, too, Danby, who during these 
years of trouble had been almost forgotten in the Tower,. 
Charles released, and in open defiance of the Test Act recalled his 
brother to the council and once more established him as Lord 
High Admiral. 

At the opening of the year 1685, Charles was approaching his 



1685] DEATH OF CHARLES II. 781 

fifty-fifth birthday. He was never more popular among his 

people. He had won in the long struggle with the Whig reac- 

tion and could afford to enjoy his triumph. His court 

Charles II., ^yg^g never more gay; its revels never madder, nor more 

February & j ' ^ ' 

6,1685. profane, nor more dissolute. Never had the fear of 

God been more completely banished from "the glorious gallery 
of Whitehall." The king was in the best of health, hale and 
hearty at fifty-five, when on February 2 he was suddenly 
smitten with apoplexy and died four days later, with his last 
breath confessing his secret allegiance to the faith of the Catholic 
Church. 

Charles narrowly missed being a great king. Once, in the days 
when he was on better terms with Shaftesbury, he had said to the 

archplotter: "Shaftesbury, you are the greatest rogue 
chariL°^ in my dominion." "Of a subject, your majesty," 

replied Shaftesbury, "I believe I am." For ten years 
these two masters of the art of chicanery had been matching their 
wits, and Charles had won. There needs no better test of the 
masterly ability of the man who under a veil of indifference and 
frivolity concealed a consummate talent for intrigue and a calcu- 
lating cynicism, a shrewd ability to read men and use them, 
baffling his enemies and surprising his friends. His coolness and 
perfect self-control, his courage in the presence of dangers where 
his greatest statesmen lost their heads, his strength of purpose 
were as marked as his final triumph was brilliant and overwhelm- 
ing. Yet with all his ability, of sense of honor, of personal prin- 
ciple, he knew nothing. Had he possessed with his ability any 
corresponding moral sense, he might have made one of the great- 
est kings that England has ever honored with her crown. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE WHIG KEVOLUTIOIvr 

JAMES 11. , 16S5-ltiS9 

Charles II. had left no children by his wife, Catharine of 
Braganza, and since all opposition to his brother's succession had 
been silenced in the overthrow of the Whigs, James 
JamefiT"'^ noAV passed quietly to the vacant throne. The new 
reign began under fairly favorable auspices. James 
was not altogether unpopular, although many still regarded his 
accession to the throne as a national calamity. The people, more- 
over, had no wish to venture again upon the uncertain 

Auspicious . . 1 

hegirming watcrs 01 civil strife. The Widely accepted doctrines 
of "divine right" and "nonresistance" had apparently 
forestalled reaction, and there was no reason, in existing condi- 
tions at least, why James II. should not round ont the full num- 
ber of his years as king of England. His first acts, also, helped 
to inspire confidence. Soon after his brother's death he met tlie 
Privy Council and pledged himself to "preserve the government 
in both church and state as then by law established." Halifax 
thanked the king in the name of the coniicil, and the council 
published the speech as a royal proclamation. Even London 
received the word in good faith ; the people felt that they had 
misunderstood the prince, and had been too quick to listen to 
the base maligning of his enemies. "We have the word of a 
king," they cried, "and of a king who has never been worse 
than his word." So great was the loyal enthusiasm of the hour 
that the people looked on with indifference while Titus Gates and 
his accomplices, Dangerfield and Bedloe, were fined, publicly 
lashed into unconsciousness, and imprisoned for life. It was in 
accord with the popular mood to regard this punishment as none 
too severe for such base criminals. Even the exaction of the cus- 

783 



1685] BEGIlsINING OF TEOUBLE 783 

toms, which by law should have ceased with the death of Charles, 
was recognized by the most outspoken Whigs as necessary iu the 
interests of commerce as well as the state, and accepted without 
complaint. And when mass was once more publicly celebrated at 
Whitehall, though some demurred and others raised their voices 
in protest, the most felt that this was the king's matter, and that 
his conscience must be respected. When the first parliament 
assembled in May, the Houses proceeded to give this universal 
loyal sentiment a still more definite expression; they voted the 
new king for life a grant of £1,900,000 per annum, which 
exceeded by £500,000 the income which the fulsome loyalty of the 
Restoration Parliament had seen fit to bestow upon Charles II. 
The crime of treason was extended to embrace any attempt to 
change the natural law of succession. A petition asking for the 
enforcement of the laws against nonconformists, also, was thrown 
out, and even Shaftesbury's Habeas Corpus Act was j)robably saved 
only by the landing of Monmouth, which caused an immediate 
adjournment. 

The troubles of the new reign began first in Scotland. A band 
of Whig exiles had infested the Dutch court, and the Stadholder, 

not unwilling to show his good will towards his father- 
o/^tmuMes in-law, compelled the exiles to leave Holland, They 
reton™*'^' gathered at Brussels, and here devised a mad scheme 

of attempting to raise Scotland and England in the 
name of Monmouth as the rightful heir of Charles II. Argyll, 
son of the covenanting Argyll who had been put to death at the 

Restoration, sailed first, intending to raise his clans- 

Expedition ,i /-< t-> i • 

(^Argyll to men, the Campbells. But his movements were so 
dilatory that the deputies of James early learned of his 
arrival, and, by throwing the Campbell chieftains into prison and 
seizing the outlets of the Highlands, eilectually prevented him 
from securing the help upon which he had counted. The Camp- 
bells, however, faithfully responded to Argyll's call; but he was so 
thoroughly outgeneraled, that the poor fellows were dispersed and 
sent to their homes without having an opportunity to swing their 
claymores for their beloved "Maccallum More,"^ and Argyll him- 

^ The name by which Argyll was known to his clansmen. 



784 THE WHIG REVOLUTION [jamesII. 

self was made a prisoner. On the 30th of June he was led through 
Edinburgh, "bareheaded, his hands tied behind his back, and 
followed by the hangman." It was not necessary to stop for a 
trial ; he was already resting under an earlier sentence, and was 
forthwith executed. The other leaders who accompanied him, 
among them Humbold, an old Commonwealth man, prominent 
among the real authors of the Eye House plot, suffered the same 
fate. 

On the 11th of Jnne, six days after the capture of Argyll, the 
second of these ill-managed and ill-fated expeditions, led by Mon- 
mouth in person, landed at Lyme in Dorsetshire. In 
Monmouth, a proclamation, cleverly put, the leader demanded tol- 
eration for Protestants, the repeal of the Corporation 
Acts, and the restoration of the charters. Some two thousand 
men Joined him from the neighboring region, and with them he 
entered the manufacturing districts of Somerset, and advanced 
to Taunton. His ranks were soon swelled by the clothiers of 
Somerset, the miners of the Mendip Hills, and the simple folk of 
the country side, but the supply of arms which he had brought 
with him was soon exhausted, and pitchforks, flails, and scythes, 
the peaceful implements of husbandry, had to do duty for pike 
and gun. The nobility and the gentry held aloof. They had 
little faith in Monmouth's claim to be a legal son of the dead 
king; they were also more intelligent, and foresaw what must 
happen as soon as the rabble which followed "King Monmouth" 
should come face to face with the king's regulars. 

The plan of Monmouth was to push on to Cheshire, where he 
was assured of support. But at Philip's-Norton, he was turned 
back by the king's troops, and compelled to retire 
jfdy 5™!?'," ' upon Bridgowater. He was closely followed by the 
rov-il army under command of Louis Duras Earl of 
Feversham, a::d John Churchill. Monmouth knew that as he 
could not advance, he must fight at once, and on the night of July 
5, determined to take advantage of a dense fog which had set- 
tled down over the half reclaimed marshes of the Sedgemoor flats, 
and make a desperate attempt to surprise Feversham and Churchill 
as they lay in their camps. The undertaking was one of great 



1635] SEDGEMOOR 785 

danger; Monmouth's troops were without discipline and unac- 
customed to the voices of their oJSicers; the country was cut up 
by broad, deep ditches, well filled with water; it was so dark that 
a pikeman could not see his fellow who marched in the rank before 
him; the enemy, moreover, were experienced campaigners, and 
knew well their trade; there was not one chance in a thousand of 
success. Yet in the very boldness of the enterprise, there was 
hope, and as the event proved, Monmouth's plan was not altogether 
foolhardy. But in the moment when his men were rushing upon 
the foe, a broad canal, filled with black water to the brim, sud- 
denly revealed itself in the darkness, stretching along their whole 
front and effectually preventing any further progress. Lord 
Grey with Monmouth's cavalry fled, but the infantry stood their 
ground and delivered their feeble fire at the regulars across the 
moat, who, from behind its safe cover, answered with deadly 
precision. Still the raw farm lads held their own until Fever- 
sham brought up his artillery. Then they broke and fled. 
Monmouth, who had early left the field, was taken a few days 
later in the New Forest and brought to London. Parliament had 
already passed an act of attainder, so that there was no obstacle 
in the way of an immediate execution. He was beheaded on 
Tower Hill, July 15. 

After the battle Kirke, the colonel of the Tangier regiment, 
who had learned his trade in warring with Moslems, had succeeded 

Feversham to the command, and let loose his "Lambs" 
iamhPand ^'^P^'^ ^^^6 peasants of the west, following the fugitives 
Assize"'^i685 *° tlieir homes and hanging them, without form of trial, 

over their own door steps. Nothing was to be seen, it 
was said, but "forsaken walls, unlucky gibbets, and ghostly car- 
casses. The trees were loaden almost as thick with quarters as 
leaves; the houses and steeples covered as close with heads, as at 
other times with crows or ravens." The jails, also, were crowded 
with the trembling victims. James, however, was not satisfied, 
and sent out a commission of five judges, headed by the terrible 
Jeffreys, to finish Kirke's work. The circuit was long known as 
the "Bloody Assize." More than 300 were hanged, and upwards 
of 800 more deported and sold as slaves to the planters in the 



786 THE WHIG REVOLUTION [jaut.s ii. 

Barbadoes and Jamaica. At Winchester the commission stopped 
to try and execute Alice Lisle, who had been guilty of giving 
shelter to one of the fugitiv^es as he fled from the battle. Ske 
was advanced in years, and a widow of one of Cromwell's lords. 
Another victim was Elizabeth Grant, who was convicted of a like 
charge, and bnrned alive at Tyburn. When Jeffreys returned, as 
a reward for his work, he was made Lord Chancellor. 

The influence of these successes upon the king's mind was 
soon apparent. The failure of Monmouth had proved that the 

day had gone by when insurgents might hope to cope 
u^'^lm James Successfully with. the troops of the king. Only trained 

soldiers could meet the "regulars" of the government. 
The nation, moreover, was now apparently all Tory. The doctrine 
of nonresistance had become the accepted political tenet, not of 
a party, but of the English people. James knew, also, that in an 
emergency he might, like his brother, depend upon the support 
of the French king who had already sent him, as an earnest of his 
good will, a dole of £67,000. His obstinacy and intolerance of 
opposition, which were always marked traits, increased accord- 
ingly; he began to cherish visions of the ultimate restoration of 
the Catholic faith in England, and saw himself again in possession 
of those prerogatives which the crown had once enjojed in the 
days of Elizabeth and his grandfather; nor was it long before he 
had definitely framed a policy of aggression towards the laws and 
the ecclesiastical establishment of England, belying his recent 
fair words, and putting the nonresistance principles of his 
staunchest Tory friends to the test. 

During the summer, while Jeffreys was browbeating terrified 
witiiesses and bullying frightened juries into giving their consent 

to the burning of old women and the hanging of sim- 
tijlnofThe'^ pie peasant folk, the spirit of passive endurance which 
Nmdetl 1685 ^^^^ ^^ ^^^^ taken possession of the nation, received a 

yet more disquieting shock from the progress of events 
across the Channel. Since the time of Henry IV. the Protestants 
of France had rested securely under the protecting shadow of the 
Edict of Nantes. But in the summer of 1685, Louis XIV. saw fit, 
not only to recall this Edict, but actively to enter the lists against 



1685] POSITION" OF JAMES 787 

the newly outlawed Huguenots, and summoned all the machinery 
of the state to crush religious dissent. It was one of the most 

foolish of all Louis's acts of tyranny, and dealt a blow 
France^'^^ to the prosperity of his kingdom, from which it never 

recovered. According to Evelyn, the famous diarist, 
"even the Papists did not approve of it." To Louis's ally, the 
new king of England, it was even more serious. Troops of 
refugees, who a short time before had been among the most pros- 
perous of Louis's subjects, but now were stripped of all save their 
lives, began to reach England. They were at once taken in and 
cared for by their fellow Protestants, and the story of their wrongs 
quickened the latent distrust wliich, in spite of the prevailing 
Tory doctrines. Englishmen had always felt for their Catholic king. 
They did not stop to make distinctions, but confounded the tyranny 
of the French king with the faith which was still proscribed in 
England by the accumulated laws and traditions of a century. 

When the j^arliament, which had given such evidence of its 
loyalty in the spring, assembled in November, its temper had 

perceptibly changed. James asked for the repeal of 

Changing i- i. j o ^ i 

temper of the Test Act and for an increase in the standing army, 
but met with a refusal so peremptory that he did not 
propose a third measure, which he also had in mind, the repeal of 
the Habeas Corpus Act. Even the council had taken on some- 
thing of the new spirit which was abroad; so that the king 
thought himself called upon to dismiss Halifax, the old champion 
of legitimate succession. Lawrence Hyde, Earl of Eochester, the 
brother-in-law of the king, also had protested against some recent 
acts, which might be regarded as a public sanction of the mass, 
and, although Hyde was retained for a short time longer, he fell 
under the king's displeasure. 

The contention of James was specious enough : that subjects 
capable of being useful to the state ought not to be debarred from 
public service by reason of their creed, and that all 
o^'jamef"^ religious tests as a qualification for office ought to be 
removed. The motive of James, however, as the 
sequel proved, was not so commendable. He had no intention of 
giving the great nonconformist body a share in the government 



788 THE WHIG EEVOLUTION [james II. 

equal to their influence, or commensurate with their ability. He 
proposed, rather, to free himself from the shackles of the religious 
test in order that he might use the patronage of the crown to 
entrench the Catholics in the public offices, and thus, by sur- 
rounding himself with a group of Catholic officials, control the 
state to his liking. It is difficult to believe that the man who 
inaugurated the "killing time" in Scotland, ever had any real 
sympathy with the principles of liberty of conscience, or freedom 
of worship, or that he proposed to shelter the Protestant non- 
conformists for other than ulterior motives. 

James had now had his first quarrel with parliament and had 
met his first rebuff. Under similar circumstances his predecessor 

would have quietly dropped the matter and waited for 
The Test 
Act and the the present revulsion of feeling to pass away. But the 

obstinate nature of James was aroused, and after a 
brief session of three weeks, he prorogued parliament, and 
invoked the law courts to assist him in overthrowing the Test 
Act. He had already given his confidence to four men who were 
in full sympathy with his motives and had had more influence with 
him than his councillors of state. These men were Eichard Tal- 
bot Earl of Tyrconnel, who was familiarly known in the court as 
"Lying Dick Talbot," Henry Jermyn, Edward Petre, a Jesuit, 
and Robert Spencer Earl of Sunderland, a cold hearted, corrupt 
man, who believed in nothing but himself, and was ready to turn 
Catholic to please the king if that were the next thing on the 
slate. It was by the advice of these men that James proceeded 
to attack the Test Act through his dispensing power, looking to 
the subservient judges of the Kings Court to give his position the 
sanction of law. A friendly suit was arranged by which an action 
was brought against Sir Edward Hales, a Catholic colonel, by 
Godden, his coachman, on the charge of accepting a commission 

in the army in disobedience to the Test Act. The 
^!!t^^if decision was given in June 1686. Of the bench of 

twelve judges, eleven supported the Dispensing Power 
of the king. Chief Justice Herbert declared that in as much as 
the laws of England were the king's laws, it was for him to dis- 
pense with penal laws in particular cases, whenever he saw fit. 



1686] ATTACK ON THE CHURCH 789 

Upon the basis of this astounding decision, which threatened the 
entire legislative authority of parliament, James proceeded at 
once to fill all jiossible places in the army and the civil service 
with his co-religionists. 

In order to entrench himself in the state church the king fol- 
lowed a somewhat similar method. As the royal prerogative 
empowered him to suspend the action of the Test Act 
Theattacu j^ sccular cases, it was claimed also that the authority 

on the ' -^ 

wse"''^' which the Act of Supremacy conferred upon the king, 

empowered him to suspend the Act of Uniformity of 
Charles II. The process, however, of waiting for vacancies in 
church livings in order to fill them with Catholics, proved too slow 
to satisfy James, who was now thoroughly warmed to his work. On 
July 14, 1686, he instituted by patent a "Commission for the Trial 
of Ecclesiastical Causes," expressly empowering it to exercise its 
authority, "notwithstanding any law or statute to the contrary." 
The jurisdiction of the new court did not extend to the laity, but 
so far as the clergy were concerned it was virtually a revival of 
the old Court of High Commission. It was composed of seven 
members. Jefi'reys, the Lord Chancellor, was president, and no 
session could be held without him. The king of course had no 
legal right to create such a court ; it was not only a direct usur- 
pation of powers which parliament had once by law explicitly 
denied the crown; it was also a flagrant invasion of the rights 
which Tory churchmen had secured for themselves as a reward for 
their support of the Stuurt Restoration. The first act of the new 
court, also, showed that the seven commissioners were fully deter- 
mined to sing to the score which the king had set them. Dr. 
Sharp, Dean of ISTorwich, had preached a sermon in which he 
denied that obedience to the papal authority was necessary to 
membership in the body of the Catholic Church. Henry Comp- 
ton. Bishop of London, was instructed to call Dr. Sharp to account 
for his unseasonable words. Compton, however, refused and was 
at once suspended by the new Court of High Commission. The 
old Court of High Commission of Elizabeth had been set up to 
protect the legal church of the realm against the annoying 
attacks of nonconformist fanatics. The new court of James was 



790 THE WHIrt REVOLUTION" [james il. 

established evidently to bind the tongues of churchmen and pre- 
vent any unseemly attacks upon the religions system represented 
by the king. 

In the spring the movements of the king became yet more 
menacing, and popnlar suspicion and discontent continued to rise 

accordingly. The refusal of parliament to allow James 
James pre- to increase his standing army compelled him to look 
resistance. clscwhere for increased military support, shonld it be 

needed. Ireland offered a most favorable recruiting 
ground for such a Catholic army. But it was necessary to have a 
Lord Deputy in Ireland who would not be unnerved by any Eng- 
lish sympathies, when the king should need the help of an Irish 
army in England. "There is work to be done in Ireland," said 
James, "which no Englishman can do." Acccordingly in Feb- 
ruary the elder Hyde, Lord Clarendon, was recalled, and Talbot 
was sent out in his place. The younger Hyde, Lord Rochester, 
was removed from the council. The temper of London James 
feared somewhat, and marched an army of 13,000 men to Houn- 
slow Heath and there encamped them in order to overawe 
the city. In the meanwhile he continued to fill all the high 
places in church and state and army with Catholics, or with 
lukewarm Protestants who held religious principles lightly and 
responded to no call save that of selfish interest. 

James now felt himself strong enough to begin the direct 
attack upon the restrictive religious legislation of the past two 

generations. On April 4, 1687, he issued his famous 
tion^fia^^ Declaration of Indulgence, which suspended by royal 
'Am-ii'4%6S7 pi'o«lamation all the laws against Catholic or Protestant 

Dissenters. The Declaration on the one hand was a 
defiance to the old high church party who had given birth to the 
Clarendon Code; on the other it was a direct bid for the support 
of Protestant Dissenters. James evidently thought that the 
Tories would live up to their principle of nonresistance, and that 
the Protestant nonconformists would gladly acquiesce in a meas- 
ure so clearly in their interests. But he was soon to find that in 
both cases he had gravely misread human nature. When he 
attempted to present a Benedictine monk to the University of 



1687] THE DECLARATION OF INDULGENCE 791 

Cambridge for the degree of Master of Arts, the authorities flatly 
refused to confer the degree unless the candidate should take the 
oath prescribed by law ; and it was necessary for the Commission 
for the Trial of Ecclesiastical Causes to take Dr. Peck ell, the vice 
chancellor of the university, in hand. The occurrence of a vacancy 
in the presidency of the Fellows of Magdalen College, Oxford, 
gave James another opportunity to enforce his peculiar views of 
religious liberty, and Oxford, an opportunity to practice its favor- 
ite doctrine of nonresistance. James attempted to force upon 
the Fellows, Samuel Parker, the recently appointed bishop of 
Oxford, who was in sympathy with James's religious views. But 
the Fellows, instead of submitting, elected Dr. Hough, their own 
candidate. Here again the Commission was called upon to inter- 
fere; and Dr. Hough and the Fellows who supported him were 
summarily turned out. The nonconforming bodies were no 
better pleased with James's efforts in their behalf. The promise of 
toleration deceived them no more than in the time of Charles II. 
With the exception of a few, as the Quaker, Williani Penn, all took 
their stand with the Tory churchmen. Thus the aggressions of 
James were slowly but surely consolidating against him a deter- 
mined body of resistance, in w^hich Whigs and Tories, regardless of 
political differences, and Anglican churchmen and nonconformists, 
regardless of religious differences, stood together for the inviola- 
bility of the laws of the land. 

On the surface, however, the affairs of James were progressing 
well enough. With men like Jeffreys on the bench, with men like 

Sunderland and Petre to advise him, and men like Tal- 
James and , , -r-i t /-<i i -n • 

thecorpora- bot, leversham, and Churchill m command of tlje 

army, apparently he had nothing to fear. James's 
position, however, had still one vulnerable point, and he now gave 
his attention to the strengthening of this point. On July 2, 1G87 
he dissolved his first parliament, which he had not allowed to sit 
since December 1685, and at once set about getting together a 
new parliament better to his liking. He detailed certain of the 
Privy Council, and sent them around to "regulate" the corpora- 
tions. His eyes were not yet open to the real temper of the Prot- 
estant nonconformists, and he still fondly believed that if they had 



792 THE WHIG REVOLUTIOlSr [james il. 

the opportunity, they would join the Catholics in electing the kind 
of men he wanted for his parliament. The Tory members who had 
been added to the corporations in 1683, therefore, were carefully 
excluded, and Protestant nonconformists put in their places. 
The justices and deputy-lieutenants of the counties, who refused to 
promise compliance with the wishes of the king, were also removed. 
Nearly one-half the lords-lieutenant were allowed to resign in order 
that Catholics and Dissenters might be appointed to their places. 
Nonresistance had now reached its limit. The remodeling of 
the corporations and the filling of the county offices with the 
religious friends of James spread consternation every- 
The second where. So hiffh ran the feeling, that when the work 

Declaration s? o' 

ofindui- ^fjg clone, and the membership of the corporations was 

gence. ' _ •■ ^ 

remodeled to the king's liking, even his obtuse mind 
began to comprehend the real temper of the nonconformist bodies, 
and he dared not issue a call for the new parliament. Yet he had 
no thought of yielding, and on April 25, 1688, with the sanction 
of his Privy Council, he reissued the Declaration of Indulgence 
and ordered it to be read in all the churches; in London, on the 
last two Sundays of May, and in the rest of the kingdom, on the 
first two Sundays of June. If the measure were designed to put 
the doctrine of non resistance to the test, James ought to have 
been satisfied. When the first Sunday appointed in May came, 
only four of the clergy of London read the Declaration, and in 
each case the congregation refused to stay to hear the proclama- 
tion. But far more serious than the action of individual clergy- 
men or congregations, was a forniid petition which on the 18th of 
May was presented to the king by seven bishops, in which they 
besought him not to force them or their clergy to break the law. 
The seven bishops were Sancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury, Ken 
of Bath and Wells, White of Peterborough, Trelawney of Bristol, 
Lloyd of St. Asaph, Turner of Ely, and Lake of Chichester. 
When James was confronted by the petition, he was furious at 
what he was pleased to regard as the raising of the standard of 
rebellion, and bitterly taunted the petitioners as good churchmen 
who questioned the Dispensing Power of the king. The act of 
the bishops, however, was soon to bear fruit. Tory churchmen, 



1688] ' THE SEVEN BISHOPS 793 

now that their bishops had protested, no longer hesitated, and 
when the first Sunday of June came, scarcely any one consented 
to read the Declaration. James turned his wrath upon the seven 
bishops, and on the 8th of June, sent them to the Tower, on a 
charge of publishing a seditious libel. The people gathered in 

vast crowds to see the seven quiet faced men pass 
and trial of under guard to the great state prison, and as they 

passed along shouted after them benedictions and pray- 
ers for their safety. The trial was brought on before the Court of 
Kings Bench on June 29. The crown lawyers in order to prove 
the indictment, descended to trickery in which the clerk of the 
court and Sunderland Joined. Late at night the Jury, which had 
been chosen in accordance with the corrupt methods of the day, 
retired to consider their verdict. Few people in London slept 
that night. The city, at fever heat, waited while the Jury 
deliberated, and when in the morning the foreman, to the sur- 
prise of all, pronounced the talismanic "Not guilty," the words 
were caught uj) by the watchers and in a few minutes were 
shouted by waiting multitudes in the streets; the whole city, 
Whigs and Tories, churchmen and dissenters, went wild with Joy. 
Even the soldiers on Hoanslow Heath, who had been called to 
arms to suppress mob violence if need be, caught the contagion 
and shouted and cheered themselves hoarse with the townsmen. 
The news ran like wildfire along the country roads, and village 
after village caught up the Joyous shout of triumph. Even from 
distant Cornwall came back the refrain of the Cornish miners who 
loved the sturdy Bishop of Bristol as one of their own race: 

" And shall Trelawney die, my boys ? and shall Trelawney die ? 
Then thirty thousand Cornish men will know the reason why." 

The bishops were not the only cause of all this popular excite- 
ment. Two days after the arrest of the bishops, Mary of Modena, 
the second wife of James, had given birth to a son, 

The Mrth 

of James James Francis Edward. Under the intense excitement 

Francis Ed- 

ward Stuart, of the moment, men were willing to believe any extrav- 

June 10, 168S. Tin , T , /^ 1 T 

agance, and the fact that none but James s Catholic 
friends were present to greet the prince on his arrival, gave color 
to the story, which was soon widely believed, that the prince was 



794 THE WHIG EEVOLUTION ' [James II. 

not a royal child at all, but had been smuggled into the palace 
by a Jesuit trick, in order to defeat the succession of James's 
eldest daughter, the Princess of Orange. The rumor was without 
foundation; but the appearance, at such a time, of a direct heir 
to the throne, who would be certain to be reared in the faith of 
the father and mother, precipitated the crisis. The Protestant 
nation had up to this point endured James, because they thought 
his reign could not in the course of nature last long. But now 
they saw the promise of a Catholic rule indefinitely prolonged, 
unless prevented by immediate action. The leaders, however, were 
wary. The fate of Monmouth's revolt had shown the uselessness 
of pitting untrained men against the regular army of the king. 
They turned, therefore, to the only man who could help them, who 
had a trained army at command and whose interests might incline 
him to prevent the theatened Catholic succession. On the day 
after the acquittal of the bishops, seven men, regardless of any 
previous party affiliations, sent an invitation to William to bring 
a Dutch army into England and save, the nation from the rule of 
popery. Of the seven men the earls of Devonshire and Shrews- 
bury, Henry Sydney, brother of the late Algernon Sydney, and 
Admiral Edward Russell, cousin of the late Lord William 
Russell, were Whigs. The Tories were represented by Danby, 
Charles II. 's old minister, Lord Lumley, and Henry Compton, 
the suspended bishop of London. The message it is said, was 
carried to William by Admiral Herbert disguised as a common 
seaman. 

When the letter of the seven reached William he was just fac- 
ing another great war with Louis XIV. In 1686 he had com- 
pleted the coalition against France, known as the 
Theprohicm League of Augsburg. It included all the great powers 

which con- & & & o i 

'^iviuiam ^^ Western Europe; Spain, the emperor, the North 
German princes, Sweden, and the United Netherlands. 
In 1687 Bavaria, Saxony, the leading princes of Italy, and even 
the pope, secretly promised their support. The league had been 
formed without regard to ecclesiastical lines and had been inspired 
solely by the aggressions of Louis upon his weaker neighbors. 
The letter of the seven, therefore, offered a tempting opportunity 



1688] THE LEAGUE OF AUGSBURG 795 

to William; by dethroning James lie might detach England and 
Scotland from their qnasi alliance with France, and by adding 
them to the League complete the cordon of hostile powers which 
he had been drawing about Louis. It was an oi^portunity to be 
greeted with fierce joy by a man who beheld at last the realization 
of the passion of his life within his grasp. And yet the dan- 
gers were great. A direct attack upon James mnst appear to 
William's Catholic allies as a direct attack upon their religion, 
and might lead to the disruption of the league which he had built 
up at the cost of infinite pains and patience. Louis, also, could 
not be expected to look on in apathy, while William overthrew 
James and added England to the enemies of France. SimjDly the 
gathering of an army would be enough to arouse the wary Louis's 
suspicion, and the moment the Dutch fleet faced the Channel 
Louis might be expected to throw an army into Holland. But an 
even more serious difficulty lay at home. The federal government 
of the United Netherlands was a cumbrous afl:air resembling 
somewhat the government of the United States of America under 
the Articles of Confederation. It was designed to foster local 
liberties rather than to support a powerful national government. 
The Stadholder had no authority to levy taxes or raise troops or 
declare war without the consent of the States-General. The States- 
General, moreover, was not a compact body like the present 
American Congress, but a loose convention of envoys or delegates 
sent from the various provincial states all mutually independent. 
But further, a fact still more fatal to concerted action, each pro- 
vincial state was in like manner simply a confederation of smaller 
states, each of which reserved the right to pass upon the acts of its 
representatives. Before the Stadholder could act constitution- 
ally, therefore, he must take every city of the confederation into 
his confidence and secure its consent. Secrecy was of course 
impossible. The old pro- French oligarchy still had a powerful 
following in many of the cities, especially in Amsterdam, and 
French gold might be expected to play an important part in rous- 
ing the old party of the De Witts to vigorous opposition. It was 
a task from which a man even of William's patience and deter- 
mination might shrink. 



79G THE WHIG REVOLUTION [James II. 

With strange blindness, however, Louis himself persisted in 
removing all obstacles from the path of William. In the first 
place, Louis selected this moment to open a quarrel 
2ouIs YiF with the pope somewhat similar to that of the old quar- 
wtt/ufte j^eis Qf the English kings with the pope over annates. 

He had compelled the French clergy to support him; 
and in 1682, they had formally declared in a council at St. Ger- 
mains, that kings were not subject to the pope in things temporal. 
In other words the French monarch was in some such position as 
Henry VIII. in 1533, when he was sending Protestants to the 
stake for denying the authority of papal doctrines, and Catholics, 
for upholding the authority of the pope. In 1688 the quarrel 
passed into open rupture. The archiepiscopal see of Cologne was 
vacant. The pope, Innocent XL , and the emperor had united upon 
a candidate, but Louis, who had no wish to lose the control which 
he had recently secured on the Lower Rhine, proposed with the 
support of a French army to set up at Cologne his all}^ Fiirsten- 
berg. Bishop of Strasburg. The pope, also, had not only disap- 
proved of the foolhardy course of James in England, but was 
deeply offended by his partiality for the Jesuits, who for some 
time had been in ill odor with the Holy See. Instead, therefore, 
of opposing William, the pope was ready to sujoport him with 
his blessings; he had shrewdly discerned that the interests of 
Europe lay in crippling the poAver of Louis and staying the hand 
of James. 

With the same blindness Louis persisted in strengthening the 

anti-French sentiment among the Dutch burghers, by foolishly 

forbidding his own people the use of Dutch linens and 
Louis XIV. , *= , r r . t^ , ^ -, ■ 

and the woolen goods or even the eatmg of Dutch herrings 

Dutch. . 

unless they had been cured with French salt. And as 
if this were not enough, by beginning an attack upon the Pala- 
tinate far from the Dutch borders, he not only saved William from 
the fear of immediate invasion, but enabled him to rely with con- 
fidence upon the support of the "Great Elector," Frederick 
William of Brandenburg, who although he lay on his death bed, 
yet sent forward enough troops to hold Louis in check and thas 
protect the Netherlands. 



1688] ENGLISH SENTIMENT AFFRONTED 797 

So far Louis was doing all that he could to help William; yet 
it would be strange if James also could not lend a hand in the last 
moment. Louis had offered James the support of his 
James"'^'^ fleet, and announced to Europe that any measures 
directed against James would be regarded as a declara- 
tion of war against France. But James with touching national 
pride repudiated the insinuation that a king of England was a 
dependent upon France like the elector of Cologne; he needed no 
French ships and would take care of himself without French aid. 
Louis took the snub, left James to himself, and bent all his ener- 
gies upon establishing Ftirstenberg in Cologne. 

Thus, one by one, all possible obstacles which might arise in 
William's path from sources out of England, were removed. 
William, however, might still question how the Eng- 
fnmisEng- ^^^^ would regard a foreign interference, supported 
midme'T'^^ '^3^ ^ foreign army. Would not the old national senti- 
ment, regardless- of party or religious division, rally to 
the support of James at the last moment, as it had once rallied to 
the support of Elizabeth when Catholic and Protestant forgot 
their differences in the presence of the Spanish Armada? But 
here also James did not fail him. James was not pleased by the 
way in which his English soldiers on Hounslow Heath had 
approved the acquittal of the seven bishops. He broke up the 
camp, therefore, and scattered the English troops in detachments 
abont the country, while he brought over a body of L'ish sol- 
diers to overawe the capital. English national prejudices were 
thus already thoroughly aroused, but in a way which would lead 
the people to hail the landing of an army of Protestant Dutch- 
men almost as fellow countrymen. In addition to this affront to 
national pride, always tender upon the subject of an invasion of 
England by Irish soldiers, James gave yet another fillip to Wil- 
liam's cause by ordering that the names of all clergymen who had 
refused to read the Declaration of Indulgence, be returned to the 
Ecclesiastical Commission. Some 10,000 of the English clergy 
thus saw themselves threatened with the tender mercies of Jeff- 
reys and his Court of High Commission. This order, with the 
appearance of Irish Catholic soldiers in the camp before London, 



798 THE WHIG REVOLUTION [jamesII. 

completely demolished what little there was left of nonresistaiice 
sentiment. All England was ready to receive William and his 
foreign soldiers with open arms. Even Sunderland saw that the 
days of high Tory rule were over, and with Churchill sought to 
make friends with "William by sending him secret information of 
the progress of affairs at Whitehall. 

Thus "with stern delight William looked on while his adver- 
saries toiled to clear obstacle after obstacle from his path." Even 
Amsterdam, where French influence was always strong, 
^ty^mes"^'^ and whose oligarchy were ever suspicious of the des- 
potic tendencies of the House of Orange, raised no 
objection when the States-General was called upon to give its 
consent to the proposed expedition. James had heard first of 
the warlike preparations of William from Louis, but had been 
inclined to credit the report to Louis's desire to scare him into 
an alliance with France in the opening struggle with the pope. 
But other rumors had followed fast, and at last the unpleasant 
truth was forced upon his obtuse mind that unless he could secure 
the support of his own much wronged people, nothing could save 
him. In the forlorn hope, therefore, of conciliating his Eng- 
lish enemies, James began a series of sweeping concessions; the 
lords-lieutenant and magistrates were restored ; Bishop Compton 
was allowed to resume his duties; London and other cities and 
boroughs were hurriedly given back their old charters; the 
Ecclesiastical Commission was dissolved; even Dr. Hough and the 
Fellows of Magdalen were reinstated. He further announced that 
he depended solely on the loyalty of his subjects, and offered to 
give satisfactory evidence of the genuineness of the new Prince 
James. In his frantic efforts to win the support of his people, he 
even published a general pardon. But it was too late; the devil 
was evidently hard sick and no one would believe now in his profes- 
sions of repentance. 

On the 10th of October William issued from his palace at Loo 
a declaration designed to justify his actions in the eyes of Europe 
as much as to disarm the suspicions of the English. He reviewed 
the arbitrary acts of James, proclaimed his own right of inter- 
vention as the husband of the heiress to tiie English crown, and 



1683] LAN"DI]SrG OF WILLIAM 799 

assured the people of England that he came only to secure a free 

parliament, pledging himself to abide by its decision. On the 

16th of October he set sail with some 600 transports, 

The Dcciara- ^nd about 50 men-of-war as a convoy. Contrary 

ti.on of Loo. -^ J 

i;9'!nr-'j!l^' "f winds, hoAvever, drove him back, and he did not succeed 
in reaching England until November 5. He landed at 
Brixham in Torbay, and with the little army of 13,000 which he 
had brought with him, marched to Exeter, where he waited for 
the gentry of the west to join him. Few, however, came to him 
at first ; the memories of Sedgemoor and the Bloody Assizes were 
too fresh upon the minds of the western people to permit them to 
respond lightly to a first call to arms. But after two weeks the 
outlook began to brighten; good news also reached William from 
the north, where Danby and Devonshire were raising the people 
in his name and had taken possession of York and Nottingham. 
James in the meanwhile had roused himself to repel the inva- 
sion. He had depended upon his fleet to prevent the landing of 
AVilliam, but the storm which had delayed William had 
ranim of held the king's ships in the Thames. The king had 
also gathered an army of about 40,000 men, which lay 
at Salisbury, where he Joined them on the 19th, preparatory to 
disputing the eastward march of William. William's army bore 
no comparison to that of James, but like Henry VII. under similar 
circumstances, he was assured of wide spread disaffection in the 
camp of his adversaries and boldly pushed forward. At Winchester 
the advance-gnards met and a slight skirmish ensued, in which 
James's troops were routed. Here also the defection of James's 
supporters began, when Viscount Cornbary went over to William. 
He was followed soon after by Churchill. At Andover, Prince 
George of Denmark, husband of the king's second daughter Anne, 
also left the royal army. James was disheartened by these deser- 
tions, and accepting the fact that he could not depend upon 
his army, began his retreat upon London. When he reached Lon- 
don he learned that Anne herself, escorted by Bishop Compton, 
had joined the northern insurgents. "God help me," cried the 
ruined man, as he wrung his hands, "my own children have 
deserted me." 



800 THE WHIG EEVOLUTION [james II. 

The defection of his children seems to have broken the spirit 
of the king, and he thought now only of saving his throne by yield- 
ing. He promised the Lords to call a parliament and 
Jamesin directed Lord Chancellor Jeffreys to draw up the writs, 

London.. His . / . ^ 

firxt flight. He also agreed to negotiate with William and appointed 
Halifax with two other commissioners to represent him 
at a conference. The commission met William at Hungerford 
December 8, but instead of awaiting the result of the conference, 
or the meeting of parliament, on the morning of the 10th, the king 
sent away his wife and son, and at three o'clock of the morning 
of the 11th himself stole away to the coast, having first, with a 
childish idea of making as much trouble as possible, burned the 
writs for the call of parliament, thrown the Great Seal into the 
Thames, and left orders for Perersham to disband the troops. 

As soon as the flight of the king was known, the Lords 
assumed the government of the city, and attempted to preserve 
The "Irish Order, pending the unfolding of the next act of the 
Detemhei- revolution. In a few hours, however, the populace 
12-13, 1688. aigQ }ja(3^ learned of the flight of the king, and for a 
night and day London lay in the hands of the mob, who vented 
their fury in a senseless looting of the chapels and better houses 
which belonged to their Catholic fellow citizens; even the embas- 
sies of the Catholic powers did not escape. Then followed a night 
of panic, long known as the "Irish night," the terrors of which 
were as senseless as the former fury. The rumor had spread that 
the disbanded Irish regiments were marching to sack the city, and 
during long hours London waited behind closed barricades, 
startled by every unwonted sound and expecting each moment to 
learn that the massacre had already begun in the streets. In the 
early morning of the 12th Jeffreys had been found hiding in a 
waterside tavern at Wapping where in the disguise of a sailor he 
was watching his chance to get away, and only the interposition 
of the authorities, who bore him off to the Tower, had saved him 
from being torn to pieces by the infuriated mob. A diligent 
search was also made for Petre, but he had made his escape with 
better success. Finally by the exertions of the mayor and the 
city officials supported by the Lords, the anarchy was allayed 



1688, 1689] THE CONVENTION 801 

and a messenger sent to William to invite him to march into the 
town. 

James, in the meantime, accompanied by Sir Edward Hales, the 
man whose friendly suit with his coachman had broken down the 
Test Act, had first made his way to Vauxhall and then, 
fli'Mof disguised as an ordinary country gentleman, had got a 

ship and started down the river. But near Shippey he 
had been overhauled by some common seamen, whose suspicions 
were aroused by the evident desire of the party to escape notice. 
They were not certain whether they had caught a smuggler or a 
runaway priest, and brought the king to Feversham. Here he was 
recognized and returned to Whitehall. W^illiam was not pleased 
with the return and sternly insisted that the king leave Whitehall, 
and on the 18th of December sent his Dutch guards to escort him 
to Eochester, where he had every opportunity to escape if he 
wished it, James took the hint, and on the morning of December 
23, left England forever, joining his wife and son in France. 
Louis gave him a courteous greeting, assigned the palace of St. 
Germains for his use and allotted him a pension of £40,000. 

On the day that James left London, William entered the city 
and took up his quarters in St. James Palace. The streets every- 
where were gay Avith orange ribbons; courtiers flocked 

Wiiiiamin ^q ^^i^g palacc to make their peace with the coming man. 
London. ^ >■ ° 

Some urged William to claim the crown at once by right 
of conquest; but he wisely remembered the pledge which he had 
made at Loo, and by the advice of an irregular assembly composed 
of the Lords and some gentlemen who had been members of par- 
liament in Charles II. 's time, determined to call a Convention as 
Monk had done under similar circumstances thirty years before. 
The new parliament, known as "the Convention," met January 
22, 1689. Its first work was to give legal sanction to the pres- 
ent order. It was not as easy to come to an agreement 
Tlic second 

Convention \\\ determining the future government of the kingdom. 
Parliament o o o 

January ' The Whigs were in a majority in the House, but the 

Tory sentiment among the Lords was still strong. The 
Commons easily carried two resolutions; the first declared that 
James had broken the original contract of king and people, that 



802 THE WHIG KEVOLUTION [.tames ii. 

by withdrawing himself from the kingdom he had virtually abdi- 
cated, and that therefore tlie throne was vacant; the second, that 
experience had taught that it was "not consistent either with the 
safety or welfare of the kingdom to be governed by a popish 
prince." The second proposition was the principle of the Exclu- 
sion Bill, but the old Tory Lords, who had denied the theory in 
1G81, could not now deny the fact. It was carried nnaniniously. 
The first proposition, however, was not to be so easily disposed of. 
The Tory lords refused to accept a declaration which conceded the 
whole Whig theory of a contract between king and people as the 
basis of government. After many conferences and various inef- 
fectual efforts to change the unfortunate words so as to satisfy 
everybody, the Lords finally gave way and the Whig resolutions 
were adopted in their original form. But when the theory of the 
abdication had been agreed upon, the theory of the new succession 
was still to be settled. The Tories fought for the right of here- 
ditary succession; and to satisfy them it was about to be conceded, 
that by the abdication of James, Mary as his heir was by that fact 
queen, since the throne could never be "vacant." William was to 
be named regent. Here, however, a new obstacle was found in 
William himself, who refused, as he put it, to be made "his 
wife's gentleman nsher;" nor was Mary content to accept a 
position, which would make her husband her subject. There 
Avas, therefore, no resource left but to accept fully and without 
qualification the Whig doctrine of the right of parliament to deter- 
mine the succession, and William and Mary were named joint 
sovereigns, but "the entire, perfect, and full exercise of the royal 
power and government" was placed wholly in William's hands. 

The revolution was now complete. Not only were the Whigs 

in power, but the Whig theory of the state had been formally 

embodied in the constitutional law of England. A very 

The "Decla- 

rapionof important work, however, remained to be done. In 
1G60 the Presbyterians had made no conditions with 
Charles II. and bitterly had they repented of their folly. The 
Whigs did not intend to repeat the blunder. Accordingly a com- 
mittee of the Commons hastily drew uj) a "Declaration of Eight," 
which they submitted to William not as a new law, but as a sim- 



1689] NATURE OF THE REVOLUTION 803 

pie statement of the rights of Englishmen as they already existed 
under the laws of the land. It reviewed the violation of these 
laws by James, and so served also as a formal justification of the 
Revolution. The hurried work of the committee was accepted 
by both houses almost as it stood. William and Mary ratified the 
act, and on February 13 they were formally tendered the crown 
and proclaimed King and Queen of England. 

At last England's era of revolution had ended with the victory 
of the parliament and the Protestant religion. In the revolution 

of 1649, the parliament had failed because the Puri- 
J^meB^r ^^^ ^^'^S ^^ *^® Protestant body had attacked the 
^'i649am.di6S8 Episcopal wing and so given the king a party. In their 

attempt further to secure their power the Puritans had 
been compelled to assume unconstitutional grounds, and thus had 
arrayed against themselves the native respect of Englishmen for 
the laws and traditions of the past. In the Revolution of 1688 the 
king stood out alone, the enemy of the established church and the 
enemy of the laws. Charles II. had gathered about the crown a 
powerful party, the fundamental tenets of whose political faith 
were: first, that the king ruled by "indefeasible hereditary divine 
right;" and second, that to resist him was "wicked and unchris- 
tian." But James by his pitiable ignorance of human nature, by 
his still more pitiable obstinacy, in four short years had managed 
to squander this wealth of loyalty, and when he came to face the 
nation, was politically bankrupt. 

The revolution, also, which expelled James was not a revolution 
in the sense that the struggle of the Long Parliament with Charles 

I. was a revolution. It did not result in any change in 
therevoiu- the form of government. But though no change was 

tinnwUcU -, • ,i r? i j t i • 

deposed made m the form, a very marked change was made in 

the theory of government. The social and religious 
institutions of England remained unaltered, but the views which 
Englishmen took of these institutions, and of their relations to 
the king and to themselves, were no longer what they had been 
at the close of Charles II. 's reign. Ostensibly a dynasty com- 
mitted to the Catholic faith had been rejected for a djnasty 
committed to the Protestant faith. Yet the movement was 



804 THE WHIG REVOLUTION [jamesII. 

quite as much political as religious; it was inspired quite as 
much by hatred and suspicion of Louis XIV. and the theories of 
monarchy which he represented, as by hatred or suspicion of 
the pope. Its parentage dated back not to the Thirty-nine 
Articles or the Eoot and Branch Bill, but to the Triple 
Alliance, the Test Act, and the Exclusion Bill. Its tri- 
umph in the transfer of the crown to William and Mary by act 
of parliament, established as a part of the fundamental law of Eng- 
land those principles which had been the rallying cry of the infant 
Whig party in the days of Shaftesbury and Russell, but which had 
been rejected in the defeat of the Exclusion Bill, and stamped as 
treason in the exile of Shaftesbury and the execution of Russell 
and Sidney. In the place of the Tory doctrines of "divine right" 
and "nonresistance" the nation had accepted, as the only work- 
able theory for a constitutional monarchy, the Whig doctrine, 
that the king is only an official who rules by the consent of the 
nation, and who may be removed by the same power, if he fail in 
the work to which he is called. 



PART IV— IMPERIAL ENGLAND 

THE EKA OF NATIONAL EXPANSION 

1689 TO THE CLOSE OF THE 19TH CENTURY 



CHAPTER I 

THE BEGINISTING OF PAETY KULE IN ENGLAND AND THE 
FOUNDING OF BRITISH FOEEIGN POLICY 

WILLIAM AND 3IARY, 16H9-1694 
WILLIAM III, 1694-1702. 

THE EIVAL LINES OF STUART ^ 
Mary ^ II., 1558-1587 
James I., 1587-1625 



I 
Henry, d. 1612 



Charleii I., 1G25-1G49 

I 



Frederick of = Elizabeth 
Palatinate | 

III I I n ] 

Charles II., James 11, Mary = William Henrietta=Philip, Rupert Maurice Sophia 



1649-1685 



of Orange 



Duke of 
Orleans 
(d. 1701) 



m. 
Elector 
of Hanover 



James HI, Anne. Mary= William III., Anne Maria=Victor Amadeus 



1701-1765 1702-1714 1689-1702 



Charles III., 
1765-1788 



Heiirii IX., 

1788-1807 



of Savoy. First George I., 
King of Sardinia 1714 



Charles Emanuel III. 

I 
Victor Amadeus 

I 



Charles IV., 1807-1819 



Victor, 1819-1824 



-Mary 



Francis IV., Duke=M'a7-y III., 1824-1840 
of Modena 



Francis I., 1840-1875 



Elizabeth of Austria = Ferdinand, 
d. 1849 



Louis of Bavaria =Mow-,!y IV., 1875-? 

Robert, Prince of Wales, 
b. 1869 



' The names in italics indicate the so-called legitimate sovereigns of 
Great Britain ; the dates, the time when each was lawfully entitled to the 
crown according to the Jacobite theory. 

2 Mary Queen of Scots according to the legitimists' theory was Mary 
II. of England. 

805 



806 BEGINKIXG OF PAETY RULE [ 



William and Mary 



The period included between the accession of William and Mary 

and the death of Anne presents a continuous theme whether viewed 

from its constitutional or its international aspects. 

Continuity From the one point of view, the history of the period is 

(tf the era of r ^ j i 

William and Hjq record of the successes of the Whig leaders in seen r- 

Anne, •=> 

ing the results of the Revolution at home; from the 
other, it is the record of the successes of William and the generals 
of Anne in securing the results of the Revolution abroad. 

At heart both William and his successor vv^ere in sympathy with 
the Tory ideas of royal prerogative, and little inclined to accept 

the series of restrictions with which their parliaments 
William and sought to fence them round. But the Toryism of the 

Anne forced ° -^ 

tti^^wfi^ ®^^ ^^ Charles and James still cast its shadow across 
the Revolution and left no place within the pale of 
"divine right" and "nonresistance" for the "Dutch usurper" 
and his wife or her sister, the undutifnl children, whose crime 
was not justified, but made blacker, by their nearness to the father 
and brother whom they had supplanted. Hence both William 
and Anne, like Elizabeth, though in sympathy with t]:ie conserva- 
tive elements of their time, were compelled by their position to 
cast in their lot with the radicalism which they abhorred, and 
submit to the parliamentary yoke, albeit never with meekness. 
And just as Elizabeth, though at first more than half Catholic, by 
the logic of her position, was forced to establish and defend Prot- 
estantism in England, so William and Anne, also, although Tory 
at heart, were forced to further the great Whig idea of parlia- 
mentary government. 

The Whig leaders on tlie other hand by no means grasped 

the full significance of their recent triumph; they hesitated to 

give their full confidence to the new king:, in the first 

Attitude of ^ 1 • .1 11 

the Whig place bccause lie was king, and ni the second place 
leaders. 

because he was "Dutch William;" nor could they 

ever forgive him for the crime of not having been born an 
Englishman. They had at first, moreover, only a half heart in 
his foreign wars; and yet, as the logic of the king's position 
compelled him at last to court their favor, so their position com- 
pelled them also not only to support him bu.t to accept his foreign 



RESULTS OF CONCESSIONS 807 

wars as well. Thus it came about that the half Tory king and 
the all Tory queen consented to the strengthening of the parlia- 
ment at home, and the Whig parliament consented to the strength- 
ening of the crown abroad. 

The results of this mutual surrender of sympathies were far- 
reaching. In the first place, there was introduced into the 
customary law of the English Constitution the principle 
concesswns ^^ party rule which led up naturally to the full accept- 
ance of the cabinet system in the reign of the first 
Hanoverian king. In the second place England was ushered into 
the arena of European political strife as a controlling power ; the 
now antiquated insular policy of the Tudors was displaced by the 
broader and more aggressive policy of modern times, and the 
nation led out by easy stages, through her constantly expanding 
commerce and waxing colonies, to the establishment of the ocean 
empire. Of these results, the first may be regarded as the culmi- 
nation of the era of struggle passed, the final triumph of the 
national parliament over the irresponsible monarchy; the perma- 
nent substitution of the king by parliamentary sanction for the 
king by divine right; of the government by statutory law, for the 
government by prerogative. The second may be regarded as the 
opening act of the era of struggle to come, which was to continue, 
with intermissions of varying length, to the final triumph at 
Waterloo, and end at last in the establishment of the permanent 
naval and commercial supremacy of England among the great 
powers of En rope. 

The first impetus towards this larger life into which the English 

race were now to be fully ushered, came from the commercial and 

naval enterprise which marked the closing years of the 

of modern reign of the great Elizabeth. It was then full time that 

commercial, Englishmen awoke, if they were to have their share of 

enterprise. ,■, , -, p,i it T-in 

the trade or the new worlds which the discoveries of 
Columbus and da Gama had opened up. The only territory 
beyond their own borders which they efl:ectively held were Ireland 
and the Channel Islands. Even the Isle of Man, which had passed 
under the overlordship of the English king as a result of the Scot- 
tish wars of Edward I., was still held in the semi-independent 



808 BEGINNING OF PARTY RULE [william and Mart 

relation of a medieval vassal kingdom.^ Everywhere the ground 
was preempted by ambitions and jealous rivals. Spain, although 
she had already entered upon her decline, still maintained her 
stubborn monopoly of the Western seas, closing her colonial ports 
to all foreign nations and treating their merchantmen as pirates, 
whenever found in western waters. The Dutch had successfully 
entered the field held by the decaying commerce of Portugal, dot- 
ting the shores of the Indian Ocean, of Africa, and America with 
their trading stations, while their carriers fretted the waters of 
every sea and crowded English vessels even in their own home 
ports. In the latter days of Elizabeth's reign, however, English 
seamen and merchants had fully made up their minds to have 
their share of the world's trade, and henceforth paid little heed 
to claims based upon the preemptions of Dutch or Spanish, In 
1600 the Englisli East India Com'pany entered the eastern seas 
and challenged the Dutch on their own ground. In 1612 they 
set up their first factory at Surat. In 1639 they built another 
station at Madras on the Coromandel Coast, and in 1668 they 
became possessed of the island of Bombay.'' Its insular position and 
magnificent harbor furnished a new starting point in the history 
of English enterprise in India. In 1690, in William's reign, the 
East India Company also got possession of three villages on the 
Hugli known as the Presidency Towns^ the site of the later 
Calcutta. They made little effort, however, to displace the Dutch 
in Ceylon or the archipelago. The teeming interior offered a far 
more promising field for commercial enterprise, and in a short time 
comparatively, the English had extended their traffic over the 
greater part of India. In other lands, also, foot to foot, English 
seamen and merchants wrested his trade from the ubiquitous 
Dutchman. In Russia, which was then counted among the bar- 
barous countries of the world, the English had been pioneers in 
the founding of the Muscovy Company in the reign of Mary, and 
although confronted with many discouragements since, they had 

^ This relation continued until 1765. 

2 This was a part of the marriage portion which Catharine of Bra- 
ganza brought to Charles II. in 1661. In 1668 he transferred it to the 
East India Company. 



1612-1632] ENGLAND IN WESTERN HEMISPHERE 809 

held their own. In the Baltic trade, however, the Eastland Com- 
pany was confronted by Dutch traders. So too the Royal African 
Company, which was specially befriended by Charles II., carried 
on a fierce struggle with the Dutch for the control of the slave 
trade with the West Indian Colonies. 

In the western seas also, the English had their triumphs. 

English buccaneers, "the first apostles of free trade," waged a 

relentless war upon the Spanish monopolists. English 

Enqiandin colonists sought out the fertile islands of the Lesser 

the Western i • i i n 

Hemisphei-e. Antules, whicli the Spaniard had passed by altogether 
in his search for gold. In 1612 Bermuda was settled. 
In 1625 the first English landed at Barbadoes and St. Chris- 
topher, sharing the latter with the French, and in 1628 colonists 
began to overflow into the neighboring Nevis and Barbuda; in 
1632, into Antigua and Montserrat. It was to these islands that 
Cromwell and the Long Parliament shipped off the thousands of 
Scotsmen and Irishmen who were taken in the later battles of the 
Civil War, leaving them to wear out their lives as white bond slaves. 
Bristol merchants also carried on a nefarious traffic with these ports 
in white slaves, which they obtained by a heartless system of kid- 
napping among the poorer laboring classes in England. Here also 
the Royal African Company found a ready market for their black 
slaves. The greatest triumphs of English trading and colonization 
enterprise, however, were reserved for the east coast of North 
America, where in the seventeenth century were planted the 
famous group of colonies which were destined to grow up into the 
United States of America. 

There was little in the beginnings of these later attempts, to 
foreshadow this destiny. The Spaniards and the French had 
already been before the English in the south and north. The Eng- 
lish had scarcely appeared in the James River, before the Dutch- 
men also appeared in the Hudson and coolly took possession of the 
finest harbor on the whole coast, naming the surrounding region 
New Netherlands, while the Swedes soon after planted their 
standard on the lower Delaware. Then came the opening acts of 
the great political struggles of the seventeenth century at home; 
but instead of weakening colonial enterprise, these struggles gave 



810 BEGINNIIiTG OF PAETY RULE [william and Mary 

a new impetus to the colonies of England in the New World and 
soon enabled them to outstrip all rivals. In 1655 the war of 
Cromwell with Spain added the rich island of Jamaica to what 
England already possessed in the West Indies. Even the navigation 
laws, although resented by the colonists at first, by strengthening 
English commerce, in the end greatly strengthened the English 
colonial settlements. Charles II. as well as Cromwell fully 
appreciated the advantages to the crown and the nation of a 
vigorous colonial policy. His Dutch wars completed the line of 
English colonies on the coast by securing the New Netherlands 
and the Jerseys as permanent English possessions. His encourage- 
ment and support led to the settlement of the Carolinas in 1663, 
and to Peun's famous experiment on the Delaware in 1081. In 
1670, at the instance of Prince Eupert, Charles chartered the 
Hudson Bay Compamj, giving it a monopoly of trade and settle- 
ment in the region about the great northern inlet, which it named 
RuperVs Land in honor of its princely patron. 

Thus when William began his reign English enterprise had 
already laid a noble foundation for the development of future 

empire. Though late in the field, the English were 
AminHfyni^of everywhere winning their way hj superior strength, 

superior energy and ability, too often supported by 
"evil daring" or stimulated by most unscrupulous greed. They 
had long since left Portugal far behind in the race; they had 
crippled the Dutch carrying trade by the "Navigation Acts;" they 
had also fought the Dutchmen on the seas, destroying their com- 
merce and robbing them of their colonies; and in 1089 only Spain 
could boast of colonies which equalled the English either in extent 
or importance. But now a new danger began to threaten these 
thrifty offshoots of the parent tree. France as yet had lagged 
behind the other colonizing nations of Europe. She had planted 
some trading stations along the St. Lawrence, and her jiioneers 
had penetrated far west into the regions of the Great Lakes and 
the upper Mississippi. She had also managed to secure a footing 
here and there in other parts of the world. But her wars at home, 
the ambition of her kings to build up a great European power, had 
occupied her adventurous spirits in home fields and left her colonies 



1664-1681] THE FRE]S^CH IN THE NEW WORLD 811 

to languish; few of them had passed beyond the trading station 
stage. Louis XIV., however, as a part of his general plan for 
the expansion of French influence, had determined that France also 
should take her place among the great commercial and colonizing 
powers. His personal reign had hardly opened before he began to 
cast greedy eyes upon the Indies, and in 1664 he chartered the 
Frencli East India Company. In 1681 La Salle pushed across 
from Lake Michigan to the Illinois and, passing down to the Mis- 
sissippi, finally reached the Gulf of Mexico, claiming for his sov- 
ereign the whole country under the name of Louisiana. To secure 
this vast territory would enable the French to dominate the con- 
tinent of North America. On all sides French enterprise was 
quickening with life, and although at the accession of William, 
Louis's plans were not yet fully developed, English merchants were 
beginning to fear the French, as they had once feared the Spaniard 
and later had feared the Dutch. It took no seer, therefore, to dis- 
cern the nature and extent of the next struggle. The era of reli- 
gious wars had passed; the era of commercial wars had already 
begun. The medieval wars, moreover, had been petty, confined 
to feudal forays and tedious besiegements of fortress cities. The 
wars of the early modern period had been national wars in which 
great armies had been mobilized, and pitched battles had been 
fought; but compared with the struggle of the era at hand the 
arena had been limited, the results insignificant. Now the ocean 
as well as the continents, was to be the field of battle; the firing 
line was to girdle the globe, and the spoil of battle was to be the 
commercial supremacy of the world. 

At the time of his accession, William was forty years old. Like 
his great namesake, the Norman William, he had never had a 

boyhood. He had entered the world in the midst of 
wui^'mii^ intrigue and revolution. His shoulders were early 

shaped to the cares of state. At thirty he was a vet- 
eran, tried in council and experienced in war; at forty he was a 
sage, with an insight into the political and social movements of 
his times which was almost prophetic. No abler man ever ascended 
the English throne. Yet he was cold, reserved, as were all his 
race, the effect of which was heightened by an indifferent com- 



812 BEGIHNING OP PARTY RULE [william and Mary 

mand of the English tongue. He did not know how to arouse 
enthusiasm. He lived among a people who were nationally bigoted, 
yet he made no effort to disguise his preference for the land of his 
birth, or to hide his lack of affection for the land of his adoption. 
His health was frail; his body was frequently racked with an 
asthmatic cough, which compelled him to seek seclusion whenever 
the cares of state or of war gave him the opportunity. The 
part of the affable master, therefore, which the disreputable 
Charles II. could play with such grace and to such purpose, was 
not in William's repertoire, and, although after Mary's death he 
made several trips through the country and succeeded in arousing 
some show of enthusiasm, he was never a popular monarch. 

The task, moreover, which confronted William was by no 
means simple. Whigs as well as Tories hesitated to commit them- 
selves to the unqualified support of the new monarch ; 
Difflcuities the Whigs on principle were as unwilling to strengthen 

of William's o i j. do 

ponition. his hands as they had been to strengthen the hands of 
his predecessor; the Tories out of sympathy with the 
king whom they had helped to undo, did not wish to see the king 
de facto, so thoroughly established in his position as to remove 
all hope of the return of the king by divine right. Then, too, 
the men with whom William had to deal were the politicians of 
the Eestoration, and the corrupt practices of a generation could 
not be unlearned in a day. He found himself surrounded by a 
set of vile fellows who must be managed by bribery, or not at all. 
The reaction, also, which is always sure to attend any violent 
popular upheaval, followed in this case almost before James was 
out of the kingdom, and the Tory leaders would probably have 
taken active steps to bring on a counter revolution at once, had it 
not been for James's persistent loyalty to the Catholic faith. As 
it was, during William's entire reign there was much desultory 
plotting, a wide spread treason of sjiirit, if not of overt act, and a 
general feeling of dissatisfaction, that at times influenced even 
the loyal Whigs. 

William, like Charles II., began his reign with a Convention 
which declared itself a parliament. The members were of course 
overwhelmingly Whig, as the first Convention parliament had 



1689J THE BILL OF RIGHTS 813 

l)een overwhelmingly royalist, and soon outstripped the king in 
their desire to punish old enemies. They managed, however, to 

place upon the statute books some excellent laws by 
Coni^entton wliich the principles of the Kevoliltion were definitely 
iiwBUw' secured. They abolished "Hearth Money," which had 
M^^' 1689 ^®®^ levied since 1653. They showed their Whiggism by 

fixing the revenues of the crown at one-third less 
than the amount which a Tory parliament had given to James, 
and also by limiting the grant in time. William felt deeply the 
lack of confidence and protested, but to no purpose. The Whigs, 
and after them the Tories, persisted in the custom of limited 
grants in order to compel the king to keep the promise of hold- 
ing frequent parliaments, which he had made in accepting the 
Declaration of Eights. A similar security was also devised in fix- 
ing the time limit to the military powers of the crown. By the 
Declaration of Rights it was declared to be uiilawful to keep up a 
standing army in time of peace without the consent of parliament. 
It was also declared unlawful to suspend the ordinary civil courts 
in order to enforce military discipline. The mutiny of a Scottish 
regiment, however, showed the danger of adhering too literally to 
this restriction; and parliament was forced to pass the "Mutiny 
Act" which fully authorized the courts martial, but by limiting the 
act to six months saved the valuable principle of the Declaration. 
Experience has fully justified the wisdom of these measures, and 
each year since, with some exceptions, the Mutiny Act and the 
money bills have been regularly renewed. This important series 
of constitutional legislation was completed in October 1689 by the 
passage of the famous Bill of Rights, which made the Declaration 
of Eights of February a part of the fundamental law of England. 
The religious problem was as difficult to settle as ever. The 
Catholics had clung to James, and, in the nature of things, had 

little to expect from the new order, save an increased 

The Tolera- . . -, t r, 

turn Act, seventy m the recusancy laws. The Protestant noncon- 
formists, however, had stood by the state church in the 
day of trial, and they certainly had some reason to expect a light- 
ening of the burdens which a cavalier parliament had thrust upon 
them. But magnanimity was not a weakness of the Whig leaders. 



S14 BEGINNING OF PARTY RULE [ 



William and Mary 



The king, who was tolerant both by nature and by policy, desired 
to see the Test Act abolished, but the Whigs gave him little encour- 
agement. Daniel Finch, the earl of Nottingham, sought to solve 
the difficulty by broadening the church establishment so as to 
include the less radical Dissenters, but met with no success. A 
Toleration Act, also largely the work of Nottingham, succeeded 
better. By this act^ Protestant dissenters were allowed freedom 
of worship on condition that their meetings be held in registered 
meeting houses with doors open to all, that the worshipers take 
the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, and that the minister 
subscribe to the Thirty-Nine Articles, excepting those parts 
which dealt with the authority of the church. Baptists were 
permitted to omit also the article which affirmed infant bap- 
tism. Quakers were to be allowed by the courts to affirm 
instead of taking the oath. Catholics and Unitarians were 
excepted from the benefits of the act. The act has been broadened 
from time to time since; but the old Test Act and its fellow the 
Corporation Act remained on the statute books until 1828. . Dis- 
sidents, whether Catholic or Protestant, were not admitted to the 
universities until 1871. The Toleration Act received the assent 
of William and became law in May 1689. 

While the moderates were thus trying to find some standing 

for nonconformists within the laws, the ranks of nonconformit}^ 

received a new accession from the very men who had 

Thenon- niost bitterly opposed the Toleration Act. Under the 

jurors. -J -i J- 

lead of Archbishop Sancroft, a body of about three 
hundred clergymen, including all the nonjuring bishops of 1689 
except Trelawney, refused to take the new oaths of allegiance and 
supremacy. The government waited a year for these "unrecon- 
structed" Tories to accept the new conditions, and then deprived 
them of their livings. The nonjurors insisted on regarding 
themselves as the true Church of England, and continued as a 
distinct body until the death of their last bishop in 1805. 

Long before parliament had completed the adjustment of the 
laws of England to the new conditions, it had become evident that 
to establish the Revolution in the other parts of the Stuart domin- 

' Gee and Hardy, Docs., p. 654. 



16S9, 1690] LOI^DONDERRY AND ENNISKILLEN 815 

ions, something more vigorous was needed than the enactment of 
good laws. Tyrcpnnel had assumed the duties of Lord Deputy 

in Ireland in 1687. He hastened the work of placing 
The Revo- 

lutinn in the civil and military offices in the hands of the Catholics ; 
Ireland. 

a Catholic judiciary, also, reconstructed the Corpora- 
tions. This work had now continued for two years and with such 
success that when in March 1689 James came to Ireland in hope of 
saving one of his kingdoms at least, he found the Catholic popula- 
tion in full control of the administration, and the parliament which 
he assembled at Dublin, at once proceeded to register in formal 
enactment, not so much their loyalty to James, as their hatred of 
his enemies. They denied the right of an English pai'liament to 
bind an Irish parliament. They abolished the appellate jurisdic- 
tion of the English courts over the Irish courts. They repealed 
also the Restoration Acts of Settlement and of Explanation. 
They then massed together in the "Great Act of Attainder," "the 
law without a parallel in the history of civilized countries, " the 
names of 2,445 Protestants, who without trial and without hearing 
were thus condemned to death, their property confiscated, and 
their families reduced to penury. Yet this measure seems to have 
been inspired by political rather than by religious hatred. It was, 
in fact, a sort of compromise with those who were urging James to 
authorize a general massacre of all the Protestants in the island, — 
a "work of utility and piety" s^^ecially urged by the French envoy 
Avaux. » 

The Protestants, however, fully believed that the massacre was 
about to take place, and from all southern and eastern Ireland 
began flocking into the northern counties, where the 
^fijmdmi- overwhelming Protestant strength of Londonderry and 
EnnLkmcn ^'^iiiskiUen promised them a refuge in the coming- 
storm. At Londonderry the population had defied the 
newly established Catholic Corporation of Tyrconnel, elected Prot- 
estant governors, and declared for King William. For 105 days, 
an Irish army of 25,000 men under Eichard Hamilton was held 
at bay from behind the crumbling walls; and when at last on 
July 30, Colonel Kirke, now in better business than when he was 
hanging Devonshire peasants, broke the boom which Hamilton had 



816 BEGINNI>rG OF PARTY RULE [ 



WlLLIAH AND MaRY 



thrown across the river and relieved the city, only two days' 
rations remained. The L'ish army at once raised the siege and 
began to retire towards the south. Ou August 2, the men of 
Enniskillen, who had passed through a similar siege, defeated their 
opponents under Justin M'Carthy at Newtown Butler. William, 
who all this time had been hampered by the treason, the corrup- 
tion, and inefficiency of his officials at home, had been able to do 
nothing beyond sending out the relief expedition under Kirke; 
but in the autumn he managed to get over a small army of English 
and Dutch under the command of his great Marshal Schomberg. 
The camp fever, however, prostrated Schomberg's men ; the 
winter came and nothing was accomplished. Yet the northern 
counties bad been saved, and when in June William 
Battle of himself landed at Belfast with an Anglo-Dutch army of 

the Boijiie, no • , , i , mi 

July 1, wi)o. 3b, 000 men, arrairs at once took on a new aspect. Ihe 
Irish had not lent themselves readily to military disci- 
pline and, although Louis had sent over 5,000 Frenchmen to assist 
his ally, the army of James was no match for its opponent, either 
in number or discipline or equipment. The Irish, however, had 
taken up a strong position on the Boyne and here William attacked 
them on July 1, 1090. Ilis men boldly plunged into the river and 
fought their way to the other bank, dispersing the enemy and win- 
ning a complete victory. Nothing but the loss of Schomberg and 
the fine work of the Irish cavalry and of the French under Lauzun, 
prevented William from annihilating the Irish infantry. . 

James had withdrawn from the field early in the action. At 

Dublin he showed his appreciation of the brave men who had rallied 

about him in his last effort to save his crown, by annonnc- 

FUgMof ii^o- to the Corporation of the city that the Irish were all 

J amen. » r j 

Treatiiitf co wards. After delivering himself of this important 

Limerick. ° ... 

information he fled to France. At Limerick the Irish, 
although deserted by the king who was unworthy of their loyalty, 
made a brave stand; a brilliant sally, led by Patrick Sarsfield, 
destroyed William's siege train and virtually forced him to raise 
the siege. In September he returned to England, leaving the 
direction of further operations in the hands of Ginkel, one of his 
Dutch officers. At the end of the year, however, in spite of some 



169l] TREATY OF LIMERICK 817 

successes of Churchill, now earl of Marlborough, who had led an 
independent commaad in the south, fully one-half the island was 
still in Irish hands The next year Louis sent over St. Eiith to 
help Tyrconnel, and the struggle reopened with vigor on both 
sides. Ginkel carried the line of the Shannon with great difficulty, 
cajituring Athlone, only to find the enemy again conf routing him 
at Aughrim. Here St. Ruth fell and the Irish lost 6,000 men. 
Gal way also was taken and in August only Limerick remained. 
After two months of hard fighting the brave Sarsfield, who had 
succeeded Tyrconnel, was compelled to surrender. Limerick 
capitulated on October 3. The terms were generous and in very 
different temper from James's Act of Attainder, All Irish offi- 
cers and soldiers who desired, were to be conveyed to France free 
of charge, with all their personal property. Certain religious and 
social immunities, also, were guaranteed. The military terms of 
the treaty were carried out. Thirty-four thousand Irish soldiers 
and their families withdrew to France, where the most of them 
took service under the French king and nobly sustained the honors 
of their race and of their foster country as members of the 
famous "Irish Brigade." The civil terms of the treaty, however, 
were never fulfilled. Upwards of four thousand families 
Violation of were deprived of lands, which agffreffated over 1,000,000 

the Treatti oo e 55 

of Limerick, acres. The Irish parliament, once more in the hands 
of the Protestant minority, then set itself to stamp out 
Catholicism altogether. In 1695 all officers of the government 
and all professional men were required to take an Oath of Abjura- 
tion, by which they denied the doctrines of the Catholic Church, 
Catholic schoolmasters were forbidden to teach; Catholic parents 
were forbidden to send their children abroad to be educated; 
priests or monks were ordered to leave the island, and those who 
returned were to be hanged. Catholics could not make wills; 
they could not succeed to property. If a son became Protestant, 
he inherited all the property to the exclusion of brothers and sisters 
who remained true to their faith. When Catholic parents died, 
their children, if minors, were handed over to the care of Protes- 
tant guardians. This legislation, known as the "Penal Code," was 
the work of the be-Protestanted parliament of Ireland, and was 



818 BEGIJSTNING OF PAETY RULE [wilwam and iUm 

designed to secure the permanent ascendency of the Protestant 
EngUsh minority. This much Protestant Ireland was doing for 
Catholic Ireland. The English parliament, dominated by the 
greed of English landowners and manufacturers, conld not be 
expected to be more merciful. In 1GG5 they had excluded Ireland 
from the benefit of the Navigation Act, and further had for- 
bidden Ireland to send to England live stock or grain. In 1699 
parliament imposed a ruinous duty upon all Irish woolens 
brought into England. The effects of this selfish policy toward 
Ireland, the result of the wretched jealousy of English farmers 
and manufacturers, may be seen in the two centuries of poverty 
which have since been the lot of the Irish, who, dwelling in a 
land fitted by nature for grazing, might have grown prosperous 
and contented if allowed to supj^ly the swarmiug cities of England 
with meat and the products of the dairy. Instead they have been 
committed to small farms, to the spade instead of the plow, 
to the potato, a most treacherous substitute for grain in a wet, 
heavy soil, and to the accompaniments of extreme poverty, — fre- 
quent famines and a wretched existence in dreary hovels. It is 
hardly to be wondered that Ireland soon became a land of smug- 
glers, "a recruiting ground for the armies of Catholic Europe, and 
a seed plot of disaffection!" 

Scotland made no such determined resistance as Ireland to 

the new Stuart king. Yet her people had had no more share in 

sending the invitation to William, and the withdrawal 

TheRevoiu- of troops by James gave occasion for outbreaks and 

ti<m in Scot- . . i . i -, • , i n n -1 

land, 1688-92. uprisings, wiiich caused grave anxiety at the Council 
Board of the new government. On the 14th of March, 
1G89, a convention, summoned at William's suggestion, met at 
Edinburgh to consider the situation. The Whigs were in a pow- 
erful majority, and on March 18, James's representative Graham 
of Claverhouse, now Viscount of Dundee, left the city. As 
soon as Dundee was gone, the convention offered the crown to 
William; but first secured themselves, by drawing up a Scottish 
Declaration of Rights, called the "Claim of Eights." On May 11, 
William and Mary formally accepted the crown and took the Scot- 
tish coronation oath. The ceremony was held at Whitehall in 



1689^ KILLIECRANKIE 819 

the presence of Scottish commissioners. In accepting the Claim 
of Eights William virtnally promised to abolish "Prelacy," and 
accordingly the next year, the old Presbyterian system of govern- 
ment was once more, and this time permanently, restored in the 
national kirk of Scotland. 

In the Highlands Dundee rallied the old Tory clans which had 
once gathered at the call of another Graham, the ill-fated Mar- 
DuncUein ^^^^^ ^^ Montrose. On Jnly 27, after the troops of 
icmds^^' ^^^^ ^^^ government had successfully toiled up the pass 
cranftie ^^ KiUiecrankie, they were suddenly set upon by Dun- 

Juiy 27,1689. ^QQ and the clansmen, and scattered with considerable 
slaughter. Dundee, however, was slain in the first shock of the 
battle, and the Highlanders, instead of attempting to follow up 
their victory, disbanded and returned to their homes. All 
immediate danger was thus at an end. But the temper of the 
Highlanders was so well known, that William could hope for no 
peace until the country was either reduced or pacified. To reduce 
it by force of arms was a serious task from which William might 
well shrink. The country, however, was wretchedly poor and 
many of the clansmen were in debt. William determined, there- 
fore, first to try what power gold would have in securing the good 
will of the people. £15,000 were set apart for this purpose, and 
every chieftain who should come in of his own accord and take the 
oath before January 1, 1692 was to receive a share. The high- 
spirited Highlanders made it a point of honor not to hasten to 
accept terms which they dared not refuse. In this struggle to 
be last, Mac Ian Macdonald won; he did not take the oath 
until six days after the time appointed. He returned to his 
home, thinking that his allegiance had been accepted, well 
satisfied with himself. The Campbells, however, the old Whig 
clan of Argyll, were bitterly hostile ,to the Macdonalds of Glen- 
coe, and seized upon the opportunity to persuade William's advis- 
ers, the Dalrymples, to exterminate the whole Glencoe 

GUivcoe, . , 

February clan. In an evil hour for William's reputation he gave 

13 1692 

his consent. In the dead of winter a file of English 
soldiers entered the glen and were received as friends by tlie 
unsuspecting Macdonalds. At midnight they arose, set fire to the 



820 BEGINNING OF PARTY RULE [william and Mary 

houses of their entertainers and began an indiscriminate massacre. 
Many were cut down in cold blood, many more, who escaped the 
massacre, perished of cold and hunger in the mountains. The most 
that can be said for William, is that when he signed the order 
for the execution of a whole clan, he did not know how the order 
was to be carried out. 

The active support which Louis gave to James made it easy for 

William to secure the primary object of his interference in English 

affairs, — that is, to add England to the League of 

The War of Augsburff. In May 1689 Enoland formally declared 

the ETUjlish ° .^,1^ -^ -,. ° , i-,.t:,v 1 

Succession, war against i' ranee, and m August a body ot Engiisn 
troops under Marlborough shared in a defeat of the 
allies at Walconrt. The ostensible object of the war was to con- 
fine Louis to the boundaries of his kingdom as prescribed by the 
Treaty of the Pyrenees. But the English fought also for tlie 
special purpose of keeping James out of England and putting an 
end to the Catholic-French influence which had so long dominated 
in English politics; and thus the war is known to Englishmen as 
the "War of the English Succession," It was marked by an 
almost unbroken series of French victories upon land. On the 
sea also it opened under the most gloomy prospects for the Eng- 
lish. On June 30, 1690, the day before the battle of the Boyne, 
Admiral Arthur Herbert, now Lord Torrington, lost the battle of 
Beachy Head. So complete was the disaster that for two 

^^""i'^.n. years the French controlled the Channel and the Eng- 
Head, 1690. -' _ _ _ * 

lish were in constant fear of invasion. Had William 
failed at the Boyne, and had James been a little more discreet 
in publishing lists of the Englishmen whom he proposed to hang 
when he "came to his own again," it is very likely that James 
would have regained his throne. So fair, in fact, were his prospects 
that many of the servants pf William, among them Marlborough 

and Admiral Russell, by entering into secret correspond - 
La Ho ue ®^^°® witli James, had begun to prepare themselves for 
May 16, 1692. another revolution. Fortunately, however, a victory of 

Russell off La Hogue once more adjusted the scale in 
favor of England and restored English supremacy in the Chan- 
nel. It is characteristic of the lurid atmosphere which hung over 



1690] THE ACT OF GRACE 821 

the English politics of the day, that at the time of his victory 
Russell was in actual correspondence with James, and excused him- 
self for wrecking the fleet of Louis by the plea that his professional 
reputation was at stake. In contrast with the brilliant success of 
his treacherous admiral, William himself was beaten in August 
1G93 at Steinkirk and again in July at Landen. 

In the meanwhile William was carrying on a weary struggle at 
home with headstrong parliaments and perfidious ministers. So 
disheartened was he that more than once he threatened 
turn Pnriia- to throw up the game, leave the English to settle their 
missed, Jan- quarrel with James and Louis as best they might, and 
retire to his tulip beds at Loo. In January, 1690 he 
finally broke with the Convention Parliament. The vindictiveness 
of the Whigs had been thoroughly roused by the foolish violence of 
the parliament which James had called at Dublin, and nothing 
would satisfy them but vengeance for all that tliey had suffered 
siuce 1681. William had hoped for the passage of a "Bill of 
General Indemnity," but the angry Whigs introduced so many 
exceptions that the pretence of amnesty was a farce. Accord- 
ingly on the 27th the Convention Parliament was dismissed. 

The new parliament revealed the marked increase of Tory sen- 
timent in the country, and William, to ensure friendly coopera- 
tion with his ministry, dismissed some of the radical 
second Whigs and filled their places with Tories. Danby, 

t)CV7*l'iCL7Yl€'7Xt ' 

now Marquis of Caermarthen, became William's chief 
adviser, while Godolphin and Shrewsbury were retired. The Tory 
parliament was a little more generous with William than his late 
Whig parliament. Eight hundred thousand pounds were granted 
for life, and £600,000, derived from the customs, were granted 
for five years. From these sums, £700,000 were set apart to 
meet the king's personal expenses, which then included the 
salaries of all purely civil officials. This appropriation came to be 

known as the "Civil List." William was also grati- 
Oracer May fied by the passing of an "Act of Grace" which prom- 

ised amnesty for all past political offenses. The few 
exceptions were practically nominal; they included about thirty 
people, of whom some were safe in France with James, and others, 



822 BEGINNING OF PARTY RULE [william and Mary 

the surviving members of the commission who had sent Charles I. 
to the block, had long since likewise taken themselves safely out 
of England. 

The years 1693 and 1694 are marked by a series of remarkable 
financial measures, the wisdom of which has been justified by 
the experience of two centuries. These measures were, first the 
founding of the National Debt, and second the establishment of 
the Bank of England. 

The drafts which the war was making upon the treasury, 
compelled William to face the alternative of bankruptcy or of ask- 
^, . , ing for fresh grants from parliament. Various expedi- 

The found- & & i i 

ing of the gj^ts had been tried for augmenting the income of the 

National ° ° _ _ 

Debt. government without overmuch straining of existing 

laws. The Long Parliament had exchanged the old medieval 
subsidy for a regular property-tax. But the property-tax had 
gradually degenerated into a simple land-tax. In 1693 a new 
valuation of lands that were subject to the tax was made, 
increasing the revenues from this source from £500,000 to 
£2,000,000. In 1691 a poll tax was levied; in 1694 a series of 
stamp duties was for the first time systematically arranged and 
carried out. The duty varied from Id. to £2, and was levied upon 
wills, marriage certificates, and other legal documents. The poll 
tax did not pay, and was soon given up. The stamp duty, how- 
ever, survived the war, and has remained ever since a profitable 
source of an ever increasing branch of the English revenues. These 
expedients helped ; but it would take many such rills to meet the 
constant demand of the war. What was needed was a full stream 
sufficient to meet the war needs of the hour. The country was 
prosperous in spite of the war. Money was really abundant for 
all kinds of private business enterprise. How could the govern- 
ment coax a larger amount of it out of the coffers of the strong 
headed burghers, without arousing their suspicions or raising the 
old cry that had been so fatal to Charles I.? Charles Montague, 
a young Whig connected with the treasury, proposed the simple 
expedient of borrowing the money, not by the old fashioned and 
unbusiness like method of a short loan on the royal credit at a 
high rate of interest, but of a long loan at a low rate of interest. 



1694] DEATH OF MAEY 823 

In 1693 the scheme was inaugm-ated by a loan of £1,000,000, 
which was to be repaid by a complicated system of life annuities. 
Thus came into existence the National Debt, so called in distinc- 
tion from the old royal debts, which were always regarded as inse- 
cure and had been doubly unpopular since the Stop of the Exchequer 
of Charles II. The popularity among the merchants of London 
of the new loan as an investment, was the best assurance of the 
final success of a war, in which, as Louis had acknowledged, the 
"last pistole" would win. 

Encouraged by the success of his loan, the next year Montague 

came forward with another scheme which had been devised by a 

Scotch banker, William Paterson. By this plan, for 

mentofthe which Montague secured the consent oi parliament. 

Bank 0/ , , , ., ^ , ^ 

England, thosc who Subscribed to a guarantee loan of £1,200,000 

July, 27, 1694. . , -, ,1 ,,r^ \ 

at b per cent., were incorporated as the Governor and 
Company of the Bank of England." The bank, in a word, proposed 
to monopolize the banking business which the goldsmiths had 
heretofore carried on with the government, and give its depositors 
better security by reason of its chartered privileges. To AVilliam 
the benefit was two-fold; it gave him a means of securing ready 
money, which was limited only by the confidence of the people; it 
also gave him the assured support of the capitalists, who had pur- 
chased the stock of the bank, and of the vast army of depositors, 
who knew that if James ever got back to London, not a jDoiind of 
their money, either of principal or interest, would they ever see 
again. 

The year 1694 closed in deep mourning for king and people. 
On the 28th of December the gentle Mary, after a brief illness, 
succumbed to the smallpox. Her death filled many 
^arv%e- ^^^^ ^^-"^ g'^'^^^st apprehension. For, although slie had 
S^^^^*' ■'^^^ ^^^ government of the kingdom entirely to her hus- 
band, her gracious and tactful ways, as well as her 
nearness to the direct Stuart line, had done much to strengthen 
William where he most needed help. William had been sincerely 
devoted to his queen, and his pathetic loneliness appealed for 
sympathy wherever jealousy of Dutch influence had not stifled 
all noble sentiment. 



824 BEGINNING OF PARTY RULE [ 



William III. 



Other events, also, helped to briug about a revulsion of popu- 
lar feeling in the king's favor. Six days before the death of the 
^, , ^ . queen, he gave his consent to a "Triennial Act," which 
mai Act," he had vetoed five years before when presented to him 

December •' ^ 

22, 1694. by }-^ig ^ri^ig parliament. By its terms, henceforth no 

parliament conld remain in power longer than three years. By 
the Triennial Act of Charles II. it had been already decreed 
that the king should not allow more than three years to elapse 
without a parliament. 

The powerful Whig opposition in William's second parliament 
had borne no small part in secnring these measures. It was due 
to the Whigs, also, that, in the months following Mary's 
Corruption^ death, there was unearthed a shameful and widespread 
tiieW^liiV"^ corruption which had poisoned all the springs of pub- 
lic service. The East India Company had obtained a 
renewal of its charter in 1G93. It was now discovered that the 
old company had distributed £80,000 in securing the support of 
those in power. Danby, the head of the party, who had recently 
been made Duke of Leeds, was implicated, and although the 
impeachment failed, solely by reason of the mysterious disappear- 
ance of the chief witness, and the discredited minister retained 
his position for some time longer, his influence was shattered. 
Another prominent Tory, Sir John Trevor the Speaker of the 
House, who had been an old henchman of Jeffreys and was now 
the chief dispenser of Tory corruption funds, also came to grief. 

Another event of considerable importance dates also from the 
closing session of William's second parliament. During the reign 
of Charles I., the government had sustained a rigid cen- 
tre press sorship of the press. The unfortunate experiences of the 
luckless Prynne fully prove that it was a serious matter 
to fall foul of this authority. After tlie Restoration by the 
" Licensing Act " of 1662, parliament had not only authorized the 
crown to renew this arbitrary watch upon the output of the press, 
but had limited the whole number of master printers to twenty, 
and further had prescribed that no printing could be done at all, 
save in London, York, and the two universities. This act had 
been renewed since from time to time. The last renewal expired 



1695] FEEEDOM OF THE PRESS 825 

May 7, 1695, and parliament refused to repeat it. Thus, almost 
without comment, was at last won the cause of the free press, for 
which Milton had striven in his day, and in defense of which he 
had written his famous Areopagitica. Thereafter a man might 
publish in England without official restriction, — subject only to 
action at cominon law should his publication prove to be "libelous, 
seditious, or blasphemous." 

In August 1695 William scored his first real success against 
the French on land. In 1693 Namur had been taken by the 

French and fortified by Louis's great engineer Vauban. 
laptm'enf ^^ ^^'^^ garrisoned by 16,000 men. But in 1695, in 
mdVftht'^ spite of Louis's efforts to hold the place, it was retaken 
meni^iZT"'' ^^ William. This reversal of French arms, the first on 

land in half a century, was received by the English 
with a burst of enthusiasm, and when William returned in October 
he found himself at last a popular hero. He determined to take 
advantage of the change of sentiment of the people towards himself, 
as well as of the disfavor into which the recent disclosures had 
brought the Tory leaders, to dismiss his second parliament and 
appeal again to the nation. The step was fully Justified by the 
result; the electors returned not only a Whig parliament, but a 
parliament fully in sympathy with the king in promoting the war. 
It was about this time that William began to reconstruct his 
ministry upon a plan suggested to him by Sunderland, who had 

not changed his coat so many times that he could not 

Tlie first o . ^ 

wiiuj still be useful to the party in power. The frequency 

ministry. j. ./ j. i ^ 

with which treasonable plots among the Tory leaders 
had been brought to light, the assurance which William felt of 
the, treachery of some and the unworthiness of others, had led him 
to depend more and more upon the Whigs, in spite of his dis- 
trust of their radicalism. At first, like Washington, he had 
thought to ignore party differences, and, by selecting for each post 
the most capable man, not only reward both parties impartially, 
but secure a thoroughly representative ministry, 'i'he plan, how- 
ever, had worked no better than when Washington had Hamilton 
and Jefferson ever quarreling at his council board, and to secure 
peace, William was compelled to select men who at least could 



836 BEGINNIISTG OF PARTY RULE [wiiLtAMlll. 

give promise of working together. The changes which he made 
during the tenure of his second parliament had revealed the great 
advantage also of having for advisers men who could command 
the sympathy and confidence of a majority in the Commons. 
When it became evident, therefore, that the Whigs were to 
return to power, William made a clean sweep of the Tory 
members of his council and filled their places with pronounced 
Whigs. Thus the first distinctively Whig ministry came into exist- 
ence, and the principle of party government was fairly inaugurated. 
Of this, the first Whig ministry of the many to follow in the 
next two centuries, Wharton, the author of Lillihullero, the man 
y^ig who boasted that he had whistled a king out of Eng- 

''Junto." land, was the party manager. He was without scruple 
in private life and without conscience in public life. lie was a 
profligate himself, and never hesitated to corrupt others for l)is 
own ends. Swift called him "a universal villain." Yet Wharton 
had one "black virtue:" through ill repute and good repute, be 
was intensely devoted to his party. He knew, moreover, all the 
outs and ins of political management; he abounded in evil daring, 
and in spite of his vices was personally liked by the people. He is 
the first of modern political "bosses." Associated with Wharton 
in the management of the party were Somers, Russell, and Mon- 
tague, constituting what was called the "Junto." Russell had no 
more conscience than Wharton, but was without his devotion to 
party or his genius for party leadership. .Somers was "the good 
man of the machine." Yet even his virtues were somewhat sharply 
defined, and shone rather by contrast with their setting, as so often 
happens in the case of the good man in the modern political 
junto; some shades of grey may look white by the side of black. 
Montague, the fourth man of the Junto, was the Robert Morris 
of the Revolution. He had served through the earlier parliaments 
in a subordinate position at the Treasury, and in reward for his 
service he had been made, first. Chancellor of the Exchequer, and 
finally, First Lord of the Treasury. It was due to his fine genius, 
not only that the new government was put upon a safe financial 
footing, but also that the solid foundations were laid upon which 
British financial policy has since rested. 



1696] THE RECOINAGE ACT 827 

Among the first acts of the new parliament was a measure 
designed to regulate trials for treason, making it impossible to con- 
vict men upon such evidence as had sent William Russell 
AcTjan ^^^^ Sidney to the block in 1683. The prisoner was to 
^^^'^- be presented with a copy of the charges against him, 

and a list of the panel; he was also to be allowed the services of a 
lawyer. Further he could not be convicted without the sworn 
testimony of two witnesses. 

While this wise and humane measure was before parliament, 
some forty desperate adherents of the exiled Stuart were planning 
to assassinate William as the first step in preparing for active 
interference on the part of Louis. The plot was discovered in 
February, 1696, and added greatly to the increasing popularity of 
the king. The Houses voted to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act, 
in order to enable the government to detain suspects until suffi- 
cient evidence might be found against them; They also voted that 
the tenure of a parliament should not expire at the death of the 
king. The members of the Commons formed a "Loyal Associa- 
tion," which was sworn to avenge William's murder, and to main- 
tain the Bill of Eights. Out of 530 members 420 took the oath, 
a fact which shows the strength of William's support in the 
Lower House. This miserable plot was responsible also for the 
last death by Act of Attainder. Several of the suspects had been 
executed under the terms of the new Treasons Act. But in the 
case of Sir John Fenwick, of whose guilt apparently there was no 
question, the disappearance of one of the two witnesses for the 
state, made his conviction impossible. The Whig leaders, however 
determined not to allow the man to escape upon a mere techni- 
cality; and on January 11, 1697, after a struggle of two months 
succeeded in getting through the Houses an Act of Attainder. 

To the triumphs of the year 1696, is to be added yet another, 
the greatest of the brilliant measures of William's finance minis- 
ter. In his scheme of raising money upon the govern- 

The "Recoin- .^ j. o 

aiic Act," ment credit, Montague had met no small difficulty in 

the fluctuating value of the coins themselves. ISTot only 

had the governQient debased the coinage in the past, but in spite 

of severe laws, coins in circulation had been clipped and battered 



828 BEGINNING OF PARTY RULE [williamIII. 

until they were beyond recognition. The coins of full intrinsic 
value, that is the new coins from the mint, speedily disappeared; 
many were sent abroad to meet the foreign bills of English mer- 
chants. As a result, investments were always uncertain at best, 
and were made with an ever increasing timidity. Long time loans 
were refused altogether, for no one knew in what kind of money 
they would be paid. In 1696 parliament passed the "Eecoinage 
Act," by which on May 24 mutilated coin was to cease to be legal 
tender. The government in the meantime was to redeem the 
clipped pieces, paying out in return a new coin, circled with the 
milled edge, a recently invented device to prevent clipping, A 
new loan of £1,200,000 was necessary to meet the expense of the 
redemption and the recoinage. 

On October 20, 1696, Montague put the finishing touches to 
his great plan for placing the national credit upon a sound basis, 
Montacue's ^^^ presenting to parliament three resolutions: first, 
Resolutions, ^j^^t the Commons should support William against all 
foreign or domestic enemies ; second, that the standard of money 
should be altered neither in fineness, nor in weight, nor in 
denomination ; third, that all deficiencies in parliamentary grants 
made since the king's accession, should be made good. The first 
resolution brought out the unprecedented grant of nearly £5,000, 
000 for the war. The second resolution was opposed by some 
well meaning financiers who believed that a debasement of the 
coinage would help the government, but was finally carried. The 
third resolution, which pledged parliament to make good defi- 
ciencies amounting to more than £5,000,000, was followed by the 
"General Mortgage," which pledged the general revenue of the state 
to make good the nation's liabilities, should the taxes specially 
designated at any time fail to meet the object specified. 

The principles of sound policy here laid down, which at 
once effectually restored English credit, have remained undis- 

„„ , , turbed ever since, — the foundation of the magnificent 

Effects of ' => 

Montagues strength of the modern British state. Louis had 

financial . ° 

measures. already admitted that final victory lay not with the 

heaviest battalions but with the longest purse. His financiers 

were trying all manner of expedients to match this splendid 



1697] ETSWICK 829 

showing of financial strength of William's government; but they 
failed utterly to comprehend the very first element necessary to 
the development of the financial resources of a state, — the con- 
fidence of the people in the integrity of the government and in its 
ability to keep its promises. 

In the autumn of 1696, therefore, the time was not far off 

when Louis must confess himself beaten. The futility of the 

Jacobite plots for the restoration of James, the growing 

The Peace of ' o o 

Ryswich, strength of William in England, his recent successes 
abroad, the utter exhaustion of France, and the sheer 
weight of Louis's foes, who pressed him upon every side, at last 
opened his eyes to the hopelessness of the struggle, and in Jan- 
uary he was glad to open negotiations with England. In the fol- 
lowing autumn the series of treaties known as the Peace of 
Ryswick, put an end to the struggle of nine years. To the Eng- 
lish the thing of chief importance in the treaty with Louis, was 
the formal recognition of William as King of England, and of 
Anne as his successor. Louis might continue to shelter James, 
but he pledged himself no longer to support his pretentions to the 
English crown. To satisfy the League Louis agreed to surrender all 
territory which he had taken since the Treaty of Nimwegen, with 
the exception of Strasburg. It was the first serious check to 
outward expansion which France had received in a hundred years. 
The Peace of Ryswick marks the beginning of a new era in the 
reign of William. The nation caught a glimpse of the full signifi- 
cance of the plans which their king had carried through 
A new era in to a triumphant peace, and for the moment English- 

WiUiam's x j. ' o 

reign. men realized that they were living under the reign of 

one of the greatest of English kings. The Whig par- 
liament caught the contagion of enthusiasm and set to work 
to pay the bills which the war had incurred, doubling the tariff 
on many articles and securing a new loan of £2,000,000 through 
the English Company, — a company of London merchants who 
for several years had been trading in the East Indies and now 
received a charter, on condition of floating the government loan. 

William, however, was not destined to taste the sweets of popu- 
larity long. Ever since the close of the Hundred Years' War, the 



830 BEGINNING OF PARTY RULE [ 



William III. 



Tudor policy, which on the one hand forbade foreign states to inter- 
fere in British aifairs, and on the other forbade England to become 
a party in any of the purely continental qnarrels, had 
icai Condi- been virtually the accepted political creed of the 
of William's nation. Like the American Monroe doctrine, the Tudor 

accession to tit i ■ . £ ii n , •, 

English policy had never passed mto lormai law, and yet it 

had always formed a powerful reactionary influence 
for peace, whenever English ministers seemed inclined to take 
part in continental quarrels. Now when the war of the English 
Succession had been brought to a successful conclusion, what most 
Englishmen did not understand was that in accepting the head of 
the Augsburg League as their king, with him they had also 
adopted the great continental quarrel with France, which had 
now been raging for a hundred years and was by no means 
ended. In other words England had forever abandoned her insular 
isolation, and in spite of herself had become a continental power, 
and a deeply interested party as well in maintaining the existing 
political balance of Europe. William saw this; it was in fact for 
this very purpose that he had accepted the English crown and 
brought England into line with the League. When, therefore, 
in order to put the country again upon a peace footing, parlia- 
ment determined to cut down William's army from 80,000 men 
to 10,000 and also to allow the Mutiny Act to lapse, it met a very 
determined resistance on the part of the king. The childless 
Charles II. of Spain, the innocent cause of so much strife, was 
Hearing his end at last. The son of Louis XIA^. was the nearest 
of three heirs to the Spanish throne, and William had no reason 
to think that Louis with the enormous possessions of the Spanish 
house at stake, would hesitate a moment in setting either the 
Dauphin Louis or one of the Dauphin's sons upon the Spanish 
throne. It was altogether advisable, therefore, as the most 
certain way to prevent war, to keep the government upon a war 
footing until the crisis should be passed. But the Whig parlia- 
ment, moved by the traditional suspicion of great standing armies, 
appealed to the accumulating national debt, which had already 
reached the appalling sum of £14,000,000, and to the unpreced- 
ented taxation which was no longer necessary now that the country 



1698] FIRST PARTITION TREATY 831 

was at peace, and demanded a reduction of expenses. This posi- 
tion was certainly plausible, and when William protested, when 
he pleaded the danger of future war, he found but scant sympathy 
among a people who were not yet awake to the new conditions, and 
were still inclined to regard the quarrel of William with Louis as 
none of theirs. In January 1698, accordingly, parliament granted 
funds sufficient only to keep on foot 10,000 soldiers and 13,000 
sailors, and William was compelled to accept these provisions. 

In the meantime William was carrying on secret negotiations 

with Louis, in order if possible to make a peaceful adjustment 

of the Spanish succession. Beside the Bourbon princes, 

First Parti- Joseph the Electoral Prince of Bavaria, who was an 

tiotx Tvccttii 

with France, infant of five years, and the Emperor Leopold were 
also directly interested ; and on October 11, 1698, France, ' 
England, and the Netherlands formally agreed that in case Charles 
II. died childless, the infant Joseph was to have Spain, the Span- 
ish Netherlands, and the provinces of Spain in America and the 
Indies; Louis the Dauphin was to have Naples, Sicily, and the 
Tuscan ports with the Basque province of Guipuzcoa in the 
Pyrenees ; while the second son of Leopold, the Archduke Charles, 
was to have Luxemburg and Milan. 

The necessary secrecy of these negotiations, which had been 
carried on during the whole summer at William's palace at Loo, 
naturally aroused. a good deal of suspicion in England. 
fnEnaiand ^^^ nation was wcary of war ; and they thought the 
surest way to guarantee peace was to continue to cut 
down the army. In the new parliament, therefore, which had 
been summoned by the provisions of the Triennial Act, the Tory 
influence was once more in the ascendant and parliament proceeded 
to reduce the army still further. It insisted, moreover, that none 
but men of English birth should be enrolled, thus ungraciously 
compelling William to send home his favorite Dutch guards. The 
Commons further humiliated William by vigorously attacking 
Montague and Eussell. Ultimately they compelled them to throw 
up their commissions, and thus broke up the Junto which had 
come to be hated and suspected almost as much as the Cabal. 
Not satisfied with these successes the Commons also attacked 



832 BEGINNING OF PAETY RULE [william hi. 

William at another tender point by proposing a commission to 
investigate the manner in which he had disposed of the forfeited 
Irish lands. The measure was forced upon the Lords by "tack- 
ing" it to the regular appropriation bill, which the Lords were 
compelled to accept or reject as a whole. Accordingly the com- 
mission was appointed, and in the autumn of 1699 tliey were ready 
to report. It was found that 1,700,000 acres had been confiscated, 
of which about one-fourth had been restored to tlie original owners 
and the rest had been given to AVilliam's favorites, several of 
whom were foreigners. During the session of 1699 and 1700, 
parliament did little else than discuss these grants; and finally, 
by forcing a "Resumption Bill" upon the Lords by the same tactics 
which they had used in the autumn, compelled the king to consent 
to the vesting of all such land grants in the hands of parliament. 
While the English parliament thus seemed bent on humiliating 
their king and destroying the moral effect of his previous successes, 
the question of the Spanish succession was again thrown 
TheSecond {^^j^q confusion by the death of the little prince of 

Partition ■' ••■ 

'i^'^^H'' .. Bavaria, and in March, 1700, a second Partition Treaty 

March, 1700. ' ... 

was arranged by William and Louis in which the Arch- 
duke Charles was to have Spain, the Spanish Indies, and the 
Spanish Netherlands, while the Dauphin was to have Milan in 
addition to what had been assigned him by the first treaty, to be 
exchanged later for the Duchy of Lorraine. The second treaty 
gave little satisfaction to anybody. The emperor was not pleased 
with a plan which forced him to exchange Lorraine for Milan; 
while Louis used his influence to persuade Charles II. to disregard 
the treaty altogether and name as his sole heir Philip of Anjou, 
son of the Dauphin. The Spaniards, moreover, were specially 
incensed, when they learned that their old foes, England and 
Holland and Erance, proposed to dismember their empire. "Poor 
old Lord Strutt fell into a great rage when he heard that his 
runaway servant Nick Erog, his clothier John Bull, and his old 
enemy Louis Baboon had drawn out his will for him. "^ On 
November 1, 1700, a month after the signing of the will, Charles 

' Dr. Arbuthnot in a pamphlet of the time. The probable origin of 
the nickname, John Bull. 



1701] ACT OF SETTLEMENT 833 

died, and on the 15th Lonis threw over the second Partition 
Treaty and accepted the Spanish crown for Philip. William and 
his friend Heiusius, the Pensionary of Holland, bitterly upbraided 
Lonis for his perfidy. But Louis paid little -attention to their 
scoldings. He had correctly calculated that in the present state 
of public affairs in England, it would be impossible for William to 
induce the nation to take up arms, and in April 1701, AVilliam 
was compelled to recognize Louis's grandson as Philip V. of Spain. 
While the death of Charles had thus raised again the question 
of the Spanish succession, in the preceding July the death of 
William of Gloucester, the only surviving son of the 
The "Act of Princess Anne, had also raised again the old question 

Si pft\p,YYi,P,lxt " 

June 12, 1701. of the English succession. From the point of view of 
the average Englishman, the question was of far 
greater importance than the succession to the Spanish throne. 
Parliament, although still Tory, took the matter in hand and in 
June, 1701, passed the "Act of Settlement," ^ by which Sophia of 
Hanover, granddaughter of James I. , was named as the next heir 
to the throne. The attitude of parliament towards William's 
foreign schemes is shown by the provision which forbade the king 
without its consent to go to war for the defense of any dominion 
which did not belong to the crown of England, or to leave the 
kingdom, or to appoint to the Privy Council any but native Eng- 
lishmen. The sovereign must also be a communicant in the 
established Church of England. The universal acceptance of 
Whig principles even by the Tories is further shown in the pro- 
vision which forbade any holder of any office under the crown, or 
of any place of profit, or of any pension, to serve as a member of 
the House of Commons. The judges were to hold office during 
good behavior, were to be placed upon salaries, and could be 
removed from office only upon the request of both Houses of par- 
liament. Further, "no pardon under the Great Seal was to be 
pleadable to an impeachment by the Commons." The Act of 
Settlement is another important way mark in the progress of the 
formal constitutional law of England. Even the Tories had 
accepted the results of the Revolution as final, and had virtually 

1 Lee, Source Book, p. 431. 



834 BEGINXING or PARTY RULE [ 



William 111. 



advanced to the ground once taken by Eussell and Shaftesbury. 
They had not only affirmed the right of parliament to fix the suc- 
cession by law, as against any claim based upon divine right by 
inheritance, they had also, by making the judiciary independent of 
royal control, struck from the king's hands the last weapon by 
which he might attack the liberties of the subject. 

While the Tory parliament had been venting its malice upon 
William, and driving from office the few Whigs who still remained 

in his ministry, the country was already stirring with 
Jacobite signs of reaction. On June 17 the impeachment of 

Somers, the last of the Whig ministers, broke down for 
lack of evidence. Ominous petitions, also, began to come to the 
Commons from various parts of the country, praying that "his 
majesty might be enabled powerfully to assist his allies before it 
be too late." The nation was in fact slowly coming to its senses. 
The Franco-Spanish alliance threatened to throw open to French 
commercial enterprise, the door which Spain had heretofore closed 
to the whole world. Louis, moreover, had in February thrown 
French troops into all the Dutch barrier towns which the Treaty 
of Ryswick had turned over to Dutch occupation, and had coolly 
announced that the previous renunciation, which Philip had made 
of his claims to the French crown, was void. If more evidence 
were needed to assure the nation that William was right in his 
attitude of suspicion toward the French king, it was given by 
Louis himself, when on the death of James II. in September he 
promptly recognized the son of James as King of England. The 
nation took fire at what they regarded as the perfidy and insolence 
of Louis, and once more turned to the Whigs for guidance. The 
new parliament met in December and at once passed a Bill of 
Attainder against the new "James III.;" and by another bill 
compelled all civil officers, ecclesiastics, members of universities, 

and school masters to renounce upon oath "the pre- 
The ''Grand tended kingf. ' ' William had already begun measures 

Alliance," ^ ./ o 

August 28, for the renewal of the struggle with France. In Sep- 

1701, "^ 

tember, he had committed England to the "Grand 
Alliance," a new coalition which was to carry on the work of the 
old League of Augsburg, and had sent over Marlborough with 



1702] 



DEATH OF WILLIAM 



835 



every soldier he conld muster to help the Dutch hold their frontiers. 
But suddenly in the midst of the busy preparations for the war, 
the noble spirit which had foreseen from the beginning the renewal 
of the struggle, and had pleaded in vain for the support of short- 
sighted parliaments in order to avert the calamity, had taken its 

flight. In February 1702 the king had been thrown 
wuuam, from his horse. The fall itself was not serious but the 

sickly body, worn out by toil of mind and vexation of 
spirit, rapidly succumbed to the fever which followed the shock. 
The conduct of the war passed into other hands, but the work of 
William was accomplished. 

CONTEMPORARIES OP THE LATER STUARTS 
^ 1650-1714 

KING OF FRANCE EMPERORS KINGS OF SPAIN RUSSIA 

Louis XIV., d. 1715 Perdiuand III., d. 1657 Philip IV., d. 1665 Peter the Great, d. 1735 
Leopold I., d. 1705 Charles II., d. 1700 

Charles VI., d. 1740 Philip V.. d. 1746 



EMINENT 
FOREIGNERS 

(not Sovereigns) 

Mazarin, d. 1661 
Moliere, d. 1673 
Colbert, d. 1683 
Corneille, d. 1688 
Kacine, d. 1699 



BRANDENBURG, 
PRUSSIA 

Frederick William, 
"the Great Elector,' 
d. 1688 
Frederick I., 
King of Prussia, 
d. 1713 
Frederick William I., 
d. 1740 



EMINENT ENGLISHMEN 



SWEDEN 



Clarendon, d. 1674 Charles XI., d. 1697 

Shaftesbury, d. 1683 Charles XII., d. 1718 

Bunyan, d. 1688 

Dryden, d. 1700 

Locke, d. 1704 

Addison, d. 1719 

Marlborough, d. 1732 

Newton, d. 1737 

Defoe, d. 1731 

Pope, d. 1744 

Swift, d. 1745 



CHAPTEK II 



THE COMPLETIOlSr OF THE WORK OF THE REVOLUTION" 

ANNE, 1702-1714 

CLAIMANTS TO SPANISH SUCCESSION 

Philip III., = Margaret of Hapsbiirg 
King of Spain I 
1598-1621 



Philip IV., 1631 -le 



Maria 



Ferdinand II., 
Emperor 16371657 



(1) Elizabeth of Bourbon, - 
d. 1645 

Louis XIV., = Maria Theresa 
King of 
France, 
1643-1715 



(2) Maria Anna 



Leopold I., Em- 
m. peror 

I 1658-1705 



Charles II., 
of Spain, 
1665-1700 



Margaret Theresa (1)- 

I 
Maria Antonia, 



-(3) Eleanor 



Louis, the Dauphin, d. 1711 

I 



Philip, Duke of 

Anjou and 

Philip V. of 

Spain, 

1700-1746 



Louis, Duke 
of Burgundy, 
d. 1713 

Louis XV., 
k., 1715-1774 



m. Maximilian, Joseph I., Charles 
Elector of 1705-1711 VI., 

Bavaria 1711-1740 

Joseph Ferdinand, 

d. 1699 



By the terms of the Revohition Settlement, Anne the youngest 

daughter of James II. succeeded to the crown of William III. At 

the time of William's death she was thirty-seven years 

Queen Anne, - j j 

1702-1714. old. She had been early married to Prince George of 
Denmark, an empty headed toper, of whom Charles II. once declared 
that he had tried him drunk and tried him sober, and found noth- 
ing in him. The couple had had a number of children, but none 
of them had survived. Anne herself, the "good Queen Anne," was 
a well meaning, kindly natured woman, but dull and easily led, 
although liable to dangerous fits of obstinacy if not carefully 
managed. At heart she was a Tory; and yet, as with AVilliam, her 
position finally compelled her, if not to enter the Whig camp, at 
least to tolerate a Whig ministry and to support Whig measures. 

836 



LADY MARLBOROUGH 837 

Thus in spite of herself Anne was forced to' take up the work of 
the Revolution. 

In this course, however, the new queen was directed not by any 
intelligent grasp of the political elements which confronted her, 
Sarah ^^"^^ ^^ ^^^ ambitious instincts of a clear-sighted, beau- 

iMdu^Mari- ^^^"^ wouian, who had gained a complete ascendancy 
borough. q^q^ the mind of the princess long before she became 
queen, and who steadily used her influence to advance the interests 
of herself and her husband, the brilliant earl of Marlborough. 
This woman who began her career as simj^le Sarah Jennings, a 
penniless lady in waiting, was an interesting compound of imperious 
pride, arrogant wilfullness, seductive beauty, and shrewish temper. 
By her good natured mistress she was regarded with idolatrous affec- 
tion, and admitted to an intimacy becoming only in equals, where 
the august titles prescribed by the stately court etiquette of the 
eighteenth century were dropped, and the subject became "Mrs. 
Freeman" and the sovereign "Mrs. Morley." Now the imperious 
"Mrs. Freeman" was no more a Whig at heart than her mistress, 
but her keener wit grasped the situation as Anne's slow moving 
mind could not. She saw, moreover, the possibilities which the 
war offered to her husband's ambition. While the beautiful Sarah 
reigned, therefore, the new government was committed to the 
policy of William, and her gifted husband, fully the equal of 
William in diplomacy and his unquestioned superior on the battle 
field, found ample scope fortjae free exercise of his splendid talents 
as chief of the Grand Alliance. 

The last parliament of William, which by the act of 1G96 

remained in session after his death, continued preparations for war 

and on May 4 formally declared against France. Lady 

(jjiurchiu, Sarah's influence was sufficient to secure for her hns- 

Earl of 

Marlborough. |)and an important place in the counsels of the queen, 
and his prominence at once marked liim for high command. At 
the time he was fifty-two years old, an age when the work of most 
men is done. It is true that he had been familiar with camps 
since boyhood and had seen much hard service, but he had never 
before been entrusted with the sole command of a large army. He 
had, moreover, during several years of William's reign remained 



838 WORK OF REVOLUTION COMPLETED [anne 

under a cloud of disfavor which he had brought upon himself by 
reason of a treasonable correspondence with the exiled Stuart, 
and which ought to have retired permanently any ordinary man. 
The persistent friendship of Anne, however, had brought the favor- 
ite forward again even before William's death, and now secured 
for him the position of commander-in-chief of the allied armies of 
England and the Dutch Eepublic. Never was favoritism more 
signally justified by the results. For out of this treacherous court- 
ier the war soon developed a military genius with few equals and 
no superior in the eighteenth century. Yet marvelous as was Marl- 
borough's skill in winning victories, no less marvelous was his skill 
in managing timid councils or stupid allies. In charm of person 
and grace of manner, the English commander was irresistible. 
With inexhaustible patience he combined matchless tact and a com- 
posure which was never ruffled. He was never in a hurry, never 
vexed, never worried. Whether on the battlefield, where his 
troops were mowed down by the thousands before his eyes, or in the 
council chamber, where the atmosphere was heavy with stupidity 
or lurid with treachery, the same indolent calm pervaded his man- 
ner. Patience was his sovereign cure for all ills. "Patience," he 
loved to say, "will overcome all things." Morally, however, this 
man of marvelous intellect, of unique genius, was no whit above 
the level of the average politician of the Eestoration. He was 
prudently familiar with the vices which disgraced the "gentleman" 
of his time, a slave to the meanest avarice, a time-server who was 
shamefully faithless to obligation, a traitor to two kings; and yet 
for ten years by sheer intellectual force he exerted an influence in 
Europe which "the crown of Great Britain had not given to 
William III." 

The position of parties at home was naturally influenced by the 

struggle to which William had committed the nation. The 

enthusiasm which had elected William's last Whig 

TheTorieti parliament rapidly cooled when the gigantic nature of 

and the war. -t i J o & 

the contest began to be understood. The nation 
shrank from new burdens of taxation; it shrank from the new 
perils which confronted its commerce on the seas. The first par- 
liament of Anne, therefore, showed very marked Tory gains. Marl- 



1702, 1703] MARLBOROUGH ON THE RHINE 839 

borough's misplaced Tory sympathies also favored the gathering 
of a Tory ministry, so that it was not long before the weight of 
the increased Tory strength in the government began to be felt in 
the laggard support which the ministry gave to the war. Eng- 
land, however, could hardly withdraw, now that Louis's armies 
were in the field. The fate of the Dutch Eepublic also was a 
matter of some moment, for English commerce in the Netherlands 
was at stake. Yet to the ostensible purpose of the war, the res- 
toration of the Spanish throne to a Hapsburg dynasty, the Tory 
ministry were wholly indifferent; they regarded the quarrel as 
something with which England had no business to meddle. It 
was not long, therefore, before the leaders had agreed upon what 
may be called the Tory policy of conducting the war. Operations 
at sea were to be confined to protecting English commerce and 
English colonies; operations on land were to be confined to the 
defense of the Dutch border, while the emperor was to take care 
of himself and secure the Spanish crown for his son if he could. 
This policy would keep down expenditure, incur few risks, and 
enable England to withdraw at an early opportunity. 

The activities of the English, therefore, were directed at first to 
the Netherland borders, where the French already held most of the 

Spanish territory; and Marlborough, much to his dis- 
miqhanthe ^^s^®' ^^^ forccd to ' Content himself with a series of 
l^!fo*^*'.5o"**' sieges by which he won the border fortresses. This 

work, though trying to the patience of the English 
commander, was nevertheless most valuable from a military point of 
view. It cut ofl: the French from the lower Eliine and freed Hol- 
land from all danger of invasion. For this brilliant work, the 
result of two years of hard campaigning, Marlborough was raised 
to ducal honors. 

These early successes of Marlborough were in marked contrast 
with the fortunes of the allies in other quarters. In 1702 the 

imperial army under Prince Eugene of Savoy barely 
of the allies, escaped annihilation in northern Italy. A premature 

1702 1703. J J. 

attempt upon the coast of Spain met with no better 
success. On the middle Ehine the French and their Bavarian allies 
completely outgeneraled Louis, Margrave of Baden, and opened a 



840 



WOEK OF REVOLUTION COMPLETED 



b 



way by the Danube into the very heart of the emperor's Austrian 
dominions. The next year offered somewhat better results. In 
October Victor Amadeus, Duke of Savoy, joined the alliance, and 
in December Portugal cast in her lot with the enemies of France. 
The geographical position of these new allies was of considera- 
ble importance, and yet there was great danger that the war would 
be ended before any advantage could be taken of the 
Campaign ^^q^ accession of strength to the Grand Alliance. Aus- 

of Blenheim. o _ _ 

tria was in fact now entirely isolated from her allies 
and exposed to the direct attack of the French through Bavaria. 
If Louis could once throw an army of French and Bavarians 




aronnd the Austrian capital, he might force the emperor, the 
nominal head of the league, to terms, and end the war. This was 
Louis's plan for the campaign of the year 1704. Marlborough saw 
the danger, and coolly ignoring the instructions of his government, 
resolved to save the emperor at all costs. To allay the timid 
fears of the Dutch, he made them believe that he intended to 
make a campaign on the Moselle, where Villeroy lay at Trier. But 
instead of entering the Moselle valley, he boldly pushed on to the 



1704] BLEN-HEIM 841 

Main, marched up the romantic valley of the Neckar and, thread- 
ing the passes of the Black Forest, joined Prince Eugene at 
Ulm, and on the 13th of August confronted the French and 
Bavarians near Ilochstadt on the Danube. The enemy, who were 
superior in numbers and artillery, held a strong position on the 

southern slopes of the Nebelthal, with their right 
BienhJim resting on the Danube near tlie little village of Blen- 
Aug°^i3^^i704 ^^^^'^- Eugene on the allied right was unable to reach 

the enemy who were protected by a low marshy ground 
in their front; but on the left Marlborough, after a series of costly 
repulses, succeeded in breaking the French center and compelling 
the 14,000 French troops who held the village of Blenheim to 
surrender. Of the splendid army which Louis had massed on the 
Danube in the early summer, hardly 20,000, less than one-half, 
succeeded in getting back to the Ehine. 

The immediate results of the victory were the rescue of Vienna, 
the expulsion of the French from Bavaria, and the clearing of 
Elsass and the Lower Moselle. The moral and political effects of 
the battle were even greater; the prestige of French arms, which 
rested upon fifty years of almost unbroken victory, was dispelled; 
the English public repudiated the cautious policy of the Tory min- 
isters and demanded a more vigorous prosecution of the war, 
worthy of the victor of Blenheim. 

It was high time for the nation to interfere. The Tories had 
early taken advantage of their strength in the new government to 

attempt to secure permanent control of the Commons 
i\)ries to se-^ ^^ ^^® ^^^ trick of excluding nonconformists from the 
nentpmmr.' "iT-inicipal corporations. Protestant nonconformists 

had discovered that they could evade the law by receiv- 
ing the sacrament once a year according to the ritual of the 
Church of England, and still remain for the rest of the time 
in active connection with their separate congregations. As the 
Protestant nonconformists generally were Whigs, this custom of 
"occasional conformity" had added greatly to the strength of the 
Whig party. Hence if the corporations could be purged of these 
Whig occasional conformists, the Tory politicians might secure an 
indefinite tenure of power. Some good men undoubtedly felt that 



842 WOEK OF REVOLUTION COMPLETED [anne 

the cliurch was drabbling herself in thus allowing unscrnpulous 
politicians to profane her sacraments, and when the Tory Notting- 
ham raised the cry, "the church in danger," the High Church 
element in nation and parliament had been quick to catch the 
alarm and rally to the support of the Tory leaders. Anne, also, 
who was a devout "church woman," sincerely desired to see the 
church free from the reproach of helping dissenting politicians. 
In November 1703, therefore, Henry St. John introduced the 
"Occasional Conformity Bill," which prescribed that any one who 
attended a dissenting meeting house, after having qualified for 
office, should be at once dismissed and heavily fined. 

Marlborough, although a Tory and although he had been largely 
responsible for the forming of Anne's Tory ministry, had no wish 

to see a measure carry which might be fatal to his 
Marl- . 

horougji schemes of prosecuting the war. Yet he had not dared 

the ultra to oppose the Torics openly, and had contented him- 
self with secretly backing the opposition of the Whig 
Lords, who were strong enough to throw out St. John's bill when 
it came to them from the Commons. He endeavored to conceal 
his real sentiments and silence the cry of unfriendliness to the 
church by persuading the queen to surrender the annates, which 
the crown had enjoyed since the time of Henry VIII. This fund, 
still known as "Queen Anne's Bounty," was devoted to the sup- 
port of small benefices. The Commons, however, had 
Anne's guessed Marlborough's secret and took a mean revenge 

Bounty" & to & 

no4. for their defeat by refusing to add a grant of money to 

his recent ducal title and by throwing every possible obstacle in his 
way in the prosecution of the war. Marlborough saw that he could 
expect little support as long as such rabid Tories as Nottingham 
and Eochester remained in the ministry, and used his influence to 
replace them by more moderate men, but Tories still, as Robert 
Harley and Henry St. John. Parliament, however, was still 
against Marlborough. During the mouths which preceded Blen- 
heim, the attack of the ultra Tories had been specially bitter, and 
when they learned of the march into the interior of Germany, 
they were furious and swore that they would bring the duke to 
the block. A defeat, or even a partial success, would probably 



1704, 1705] CAPTURE OF GIBRALTAE 843 

have put an end to Marlborough's career then and there. Instead, 
however, came back the news, first a rumor and then a certainty, 
of the greatest victory which English arms had won on the 
continent since the days of Agincourt. Marlborough saw his 
opportunity, and by the support of his wife persuaded Anne to 
appeal to the country. When the new parliament assembled in 

1705, a powerful Whig majority showed conclusively that the 
nation approved of Blenheim, Marlborough, who had now drifted 
far from his old Tory moorings, hastened to put himself in line 
with the reaction by forming a coalition between the moderate 
Tories and the old Whig Junto. That he did not go farther 
was due probably to his respect for the queen's antipathy to 
Whigs, For Anne was by no means a cipher in politics. 

The center of interest in the war during the year after Blenheim 
drifted to Spain. Marlborough was secure from the attack of the 

Tories at home, but abroad he was doomed to meet with 
in Spain, disappointment. He j)lanned first to attack France by 

the Moselle, but he could not induce the imperial gen- 
erals to take their armies so far from home. Then he thought to 
penetrate the French lines on the Dyle and attack Villeroy at 
Waterloo, but the deputies of the Dutch States refused to support 
him. So the year was frittered away and nothing was done. In 
Italy there was also the same record of divided counsels and aimless 
timidity. From Spain, however, the allies got more comfort. In 
1702 the Anglo-Dutch fleet had begun operations on the coast, 
bombarding Cadiz and destroying a treasure fleet in Vigo Bay. 
Little, however, had been gained until about four weeks before the 
Battle of Blenheim, when Admiral Rooke surprised and took 
Gibraltar, The next year, 1705, Admiral Leake strengthened the 
Caitureof foothold of England on the peninsula, by defeating 
Gibraltar, ^j^g French fleet, flrst off Malaga and again almost 
3,1704. under the shadow of Gibraltar. Later, Charles Mor- 

daunt, the eccentric earl of Peterborough, made a daring but 
successful attack on Barcelona, and on the basis of this success 
Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia accepted the Archduke Charles 
as "Charles III," of Spain. 

The Dutch States now began to realize the mistake which they 



844 



WORK OF REVOLUTION COMPLETED 



had made in fettering the eagle, and when the year 1706 opened, 
left Mariborongh free to strike the enemy where he would. On 

the 23d of May he found the French army under com- 
MaySVoff. ^^^^ o£ Villeroy posted about the little village of Ra- 

millies, about thirty miles from Brussels. The French 
were drawn up on high ground protected by a marsh and extending 
along the arc of a bent bow, facing inward. The English and 
Dutch occupied the line of the taut string. Marlborough seized 



I French Army „n j \ ,, 
Army of the Alhes |\\-2 




the opportunity offered by this formation, and taking advantage 
of the inner and shorter line, began a series of feints along the 
whole front, under cover of which he massed his troops on his left 
wing ; then hurling himself upon the French right, in a brilliant 
charge which he led in person, overwhelmed the enemies' right 
wing, and doubling back the center and left, was soon chasing the 
scattered fugitives into Brussels. The execution of this masterly 
manoeuver took less than an hour and a half. The French lost 
15,000 men, their guns and their baggage, and left the line of 



1706, 1707] UNIOX OF ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND 845 

the Scheldt open to the allies. Marlborough moved on to Brussels, 
the capital of the Spanish Netherlands, and proclaimed "Charles 
III." Ghent, Bruges, Ostend, and Antwerp yielded, and by the 
end of the campaign, of all the Spanish Netherland cities only 
Mons and Namur continued to hold out for King Philip. 

This auspicious opening of the year 1706 was soon followed by 
like successes in Italy where Prince Eugene defeated a French 
army at Casale, saved Turin, and opened the way for an Austrian 
army to enter Naples in October and proclaim "Charles III." in 
the capital of Spanish Italy. Charles had already been pro- 
claimed by Peterborough in Madrid in June. 

At home Marlborough's "composite ministry" had added still 

another triumph which contributed not a little to the moral weight 

of England abroad, by terminating the old personal union 

The union of England and Scotland and uniting the two people 

0/ England ^ ^ • , . oi -if^i ii 

and Scotland, into One organic state. Such a union had been dreamed 
of by Edward I., and its importance fully grasped 
by James I. ; it had existed for a few years under the Protector, 
but had been abandoned again at the Eestoration. In 1660 the 
Scots were the most ardent advocates of separation, but independ- 
ence had brought them little comfort. They found themselves 
shut out from the advantages of the Navigation Acts ; they lost 
their trade with England and her colonies; their commerce was, 
ruined. The Eestoration government, moreover, which was bad 
enough in England, had been worse in Scotland, where a council 
of jobbers had exploited the country with the aid of thumbscrew 
and dragonnade; corruption had poisoned the courts of justice; 
the national religion had been driven to the hills and the hated 
Anglicanism of the south again forced upon the people. 

William had been wise enough to leave the Scots to their Pres- 

byteriauism ; but he had earnestly desired political union. Events, 

however, instead of supporting the king or allaying the 

Scotland suspicious of the Scots, had conspired to increase their 

after the 

devolution, discontent. The restoration of the Presbyterian 

Church had strengthened the old hostility to the south 

by appealing again to the smouldering ecclesiastical hatreds of the 

century. The tragedy of Glencoe, for which a feud of two High- 



846 WORK OF REVOLUTIOlSr COMPLETED [anne 

land clans was largely responsible, was regarded as the crime of 
an English king against Scotland. 

In 1695 William Paterson, the erratic genins who had devised 
the Bank of England, set afloat another scheme which was to 
give Scotland her share of the colonial trade of the 
Company, world and make the promoters fabnlously rich. His 
scheme was to plant a colony of Scotsmen on the 
Isthmus of Darien, and by securing an easy and safe transit across 
the isthmus provide a far more direct and satisfactory communi- 
cation between Asia and Europe than the long and dangerous pas- 
sage around the Cape of Good Hope. It is the fashion of historical 
writers to laugh at poor Paterson's dream. But it was the dream 
of a genius, not of a madman. He saw what the modern pro- 
moters of the various isthmian canal schemes have since seen, that 
if once the traffic of the two oceans could be diverted to the 
isthmian route, there would be untold wealth in the control and 
handling of it. Poor poverty ridden Scotland got one glimpse of 
the seer's vision, and went as daft as the French of the last 
generation over the Panama canal. Unfortunately for Paterson 
and the multitude of Scotsmen who invested their small hoard- 
ings in his project, Scotland, unaided, had neither the wealth nor 
the industries to set such a scheme fairly on its feet. The Eng- 
lish, ever jealous and suspicious for their own trade supremacy, 
had no thought of turning from the established sea routes in 
order to encourage Scottish colonists or enrich Scottish capitalists. 
The Spaniards, also, aroused by the threatened invasion of their 
rights, waged relentless war, and leaguing with the deadly climate, 
soon dispelled the dreams of the unhappy wretches who went out 
to gain a fortune in the new world, only to find a grave. The 
Scots, who could not see that the enterprise Avas doomed to fail from 
the first, were inclined to ascribe the failure to anything except 
the true cause, and laid all the blame upon English influence. 
The loss of so much good Scotch money was followed by a 
paroxysm of resentment, which rapidly passed into a dangerous 
attitude of settled hostility to England. 

The wiser leaders on both sides of the border fully realized the 
danger of allowing the reviving spirit of animosity to grow 



1704, 1705] THE BILL OF SECURITT 847 

unchecked, and in the interests of peace began again to consider seri- 
ously the question of the organic union of the two kingdoms. The 

first commissioners, however, separated without results. 
Security," and when the Scottish parliament met in May, 1703 

the worst fears threatened to be realized. The anti- 
English elements pushed through a series of articles aimed directly 
at the existing union, declaring that the Presbyterian Church "is 
the only church in the kingdom, " and demanding further that 
the officers of state in Scotland be appointed by the Scottish 
estates. They forbade any sovereign of England after Anne to make 
peace or war without the consent of the Scottish parliament; they 
declared that if during Anne's reign freedom of trade and free- 
dom of religion were not guaranteed to Scotland, the successor of 
Anne, while of the Protestant line, must not be the same as the 
successor to the English crown, thus threatening to part com- 
pany with England altogether. ' Anne of course refused her con- 
sent to these measures; but in 1704 the last article, known as the 
' ' Bill of Securi ty , ' ' was again presented to her, and accepted in hope 
of conciliation. The English, however, were in no conciliatory 
mood, and met threat with threat. In the fall of 1705 parliament 

passed an "Alien Bill" which threatened to take from the 
miir^loT Scots the rights which they had enjoyed since the time 

of James I., by once more treating them as aliens. The 
importing of their staples, cattle, sheep, coal, and linen, was also 
prohibited, and the border fortresses restored and fortified. The 
act was to go into effect after Christmas, 1705. These acts, which 
portended war, brought to their senses the men on either side of 
the border who were still amenable to reason, and in April, 1706, a 
new body of commissioners was appointed, thirty-one on each side. 
The recent prestige of English arms abroad which deprived Scotland 
of all hope of hel^) from Erance, as well as the tact and patience of 
Godolphin, Somers, and Montague, carried the day for peace; and 
in December twenty-five articles of union were formally accepted 
by the commissioners and submitted to their respective parlia- 
ments. 

The two most difficult points to settle had been the represen- 
tation to be allowed Scotland in the English Commons, and the 



848 WORK OF REVOLUTION COMPLETED [anne 

relation of the Scots to the English national debt. The English- 
House of Commons in 1706 numbered 513. If the Scots were 
, . admitted upon the basis of population they would be 
union. entitled to 69 members, but if they were admitted 

upon the basis of wealth they would be entitled only to 12 mem- 
bers. The one adjustment would be as unfair to the English tax 
payers, as the other would be unsatisfactory to the Scots. A com- 
promise was therefore agreed upon and the number fixed at 45, 30 
of whom were to be chosen by counties, and 15 by boroughs.^ 
Beside the representation in the Commons, the Scots were to be 
entitled also to 16 peers in the Upper House, who should be 
elected by the Scottish peers at the beginning of each parliament. 
A yet more serious question lay in the English debt, which now 
amounted to upwards of £20,000,000, while the Scottish debt 
amounted to £160,000. Here also skill and patience carried the 
day. The English agreed to pay the Scots £398,000, with which 
to pay oif their national debt and close up the affairs of the 
Darien Company, while the Scots assumed their share of the Eng- 
lish national debt. Other points were not so difficult to settle. The 
two peoples were to form one kingdom to be known henceforth as 
"Great Britain ;" the sovereign was to be determined as already pre- 
scribed by the Act of Settlement. Eacli new sovereign must swear 
to maintain the Presbyterian Church as the established Church of 
Scotland. The laws of trade, excise, and customs, were to be 
common to both kingdoms; other laws of Scotland were to remain 
unchanged, but subject to revision by the parliament of the 
United Kingdom. The judicial system of Scotland was also to 
remain unchanged, but an appeal might be lodged from the 
Scottish court of Session to the House of Lords. Scotsmen, 
moreover, were to have all trade privileges enjoyed by Englishmen. 
Coins, weights, and measures were to conform to English standards. 
At last all questions were settled, and all claims adjusted, and 
on January 16, 1707 the Scottish parliament accepted the condi- 
tions of union by a vote of 110 to 69; the English parliament 

^ This arrangement remained until 1832 when the representation was 
raised by the Reform Bill to 53. By the second Reform Bill 1868, it was 
increased to 60. In 1884 it was further increased to 72. 



1707] • THE ACT OF UITION" 849 

accepted them on March 6.' On May 1 the famous "Union Jack," 
which had been designed by James I., representing the union of the 

two peoples by tlie blending of the cross of St. George 

effected, 1707. ^^^1^ the cross of St. Andrews, was for the first time 

flung out to the breeze. The first British parliament met in October. 

The Jealous suspicions of the Scottish clergy of the English 

bishops, Scottish patriotism so called, narrow and shortsighted, 

English Jacobitism, which saw its last hope blasted, 

Advantage English commercial interests, and Anglican church 

of the union n i i ^ i • ... 

to Scotland, interests, all had lought the union m its inception 

and made as much trouble as possible after it had 
become an accomplished fact. But what was done could not be 
undone, and in the presence of the substantial advantages which 
came to both peoples, opposition soon ceased. Glasgow opened a 
flourishing trade with the American colonies and before the gen- 
eration had passed could boast of sixty-seven vessels engaged in 
the American trade. The trade in linens and woolens sprang 
into new life. Products hitherto of little value, with new markets 
soon became sources of national wealth. Agriculture also assumed 
a new appearance, and though it failed to keep pace with the 
growing warehouses of Glasgow, or the shipyards of the Clyde, 
the new prosperity was felt and appreciated. Civilization followed 
hard upon the heels of new wealth. The people began to live in 
better, cleaner, and more comfortable houses. The old hereditary 
jurisdiction of the Highland chieftains gave way to the laws and 
law courts of the south. Military roads threaded their way 
among the mountain gorges; rocks which once echoed with the 
scream of the northern eagle, or the shouts of rival clansmen at 
slaughter, soon began to respond to the hum of peaceful factories 
or the shout of the plowman or the shepherd. 

While Englishmen at home were thus securing the results of 
victory, the tide was already turning against the allies on the con- 
tinent. In the winter of 1706 and 1707, Louis had 

Reverse of , 

theaiues, made overtures of peace, offering to give the Dutch 

the barrier fortresses and leave Charles in possession 

of Spain and the Indies, if only Philip might be allowed to keep 

1 Lee, Source Book, p. 445. 



850 WORK OE REVOLUTION COMPLETED [anne 

Milan and the Sicilies. Bnt the allies, now confident of com- 
plete success, had no thought of allowing Louis a part of the loaf, 
which had been virtually snatched from his hands. A new 
element, however, upon which the allies apparently had not reck- 
oned, was now thrown into the scales. The Castilians them- 
selves rallied to the support of the dispossessed Bourbon and early 
in the year, with the help of a new French army, brought Philip 
back to Madrid in the wake of the retreating Ilapsburger. Eugene 
in Italy was hardly more successful than Charles in Spain, and 
even Marlborough made but indifferent jirogress in Flanders. 

The next year, 1708, opened dubiously for the allies. A 

threatened descent of the Pretender upon the Scottish coast 

retained Marlborough in England until it was certain 

The cam- ^liat the Stuart prince had returned again to Dunkirk. 

pmon of 1708. i ° 

When the Duke reached the Netherlands he found the 
towns which he had won two years before voluntarily opening 
their gates to the French. Ghent and Bruges had already received 
French garrisons, and to save Oudenarde, the duke crossed the 
Scheldt and on July 11 forced the French to fight him before the 
town. He had only 80,000 men to pit against the 100,000 of the 
French marshals. Burgundy and Yendome. But the opposing 
generals were jealous of each other and so confused their subal- 
terns by contradictory orders, that Marlborough was permitted to 
outflank and cut off a whole detachment. It was no such victory 
as Blenheim or Eamillies, but it was enough to check the 
advance of Louis. Marlborough would have moved upon Paris 
at once in order to force Louis to terms under the walls of his 
capital, but the timidity of the Dutch and English statesmen kept 
him upon the borders and compelled him to be content with the 
capture of Lille, the strongest of all Louis's magnificent frontier 
fortresses. Louis had long since lost his zest for the war. His 
marshals evidently were no match for the terrible "Malbrook." 
Each camjDaign, moreover, rolled the tide of war nearer to the 
French capital. The next battle would undoubtedly be fought on 
French soil. France, moreover, was exhausted; her resources 
spent; the sufferings of her people terrible. Louis, accordingly, 
sent Torcy in the spring to treat for peace. He would yield all 



1709] MALPLAQUET 851 

that the allies were contending for ; he would submit to the exclu- 
sion of Philip from Spain, allow the Dutch to hold ten fortresses 
on the border, and retire to the old boundaries which France 
held in 1648 at the time of the Peace of Westphalia. He would 
'ilso acknowledge Anne, drive James the Pretender out of France, 
and destroy the fortifications of Dunkirk, which had been the 
favorite port of the French privateers. The allies, however, were 
not satisfied. Possibly they distrusted Louis; possibly, moved by 
a sense of justice, they proposed to compel Louis to undo his 
own work; possibly Marlborough was not inclined to surrender 
his profitable post of commander-in-chief; but whatever the 
motive, in an evil hour they refused to accept Louis's overtures, 
unless he would consent to send his own French armies to drive 
his grandson out of Spain and restore the kingdom to the Austrian 
prince. It was bitter medicine and Louis refused to take it. "If 
I must wage war," he declared, "I prefer to wage it against my 
enemies rather than my children." The nation, suffering and 
burdened though it was, rallied with fine spirit to the support 
of the aged monarch. Something of the old national pride 
flashed up; and late in the summer of 1709, he was able to 
throw Marshal Villars with an army of 70,000 men into 
Flanders, in the hope of saving the wreck of the French border 
cities. Tournay had fallen, and Marlborough and Eugene were 
before Mons. With 80,000 men they at once advanced to meet 
Villars and on September 11 found him posted in a strong 
position_ at the village of Malplaquet. Marlborough with his 
usual cold blooded determination to win, massed his troops and 
hurled them upon the French center, the weak point in Villars' 
line. He won the day but it cost him 21,000 men, twice the loss 
of the French. The enemy, moreover, retired in good order. 
Mons fell, but it was the only reward of the dearly bought victory. 
At home the Whigs had been steadily gaining ground. The 
first parliament of Great Britain which had been called together 
in October 1707, saw the fall of the coalition ministry; Anne, 
in spite of her aversion to Whigs in general, in February 1708 was 
compelled to see even such moderate Tories as Harley and St. John 
replaced by the representatives of the old Whig Junto, Wharton, 



852 WORK or revolution completed [anne 

Somers, and Russell, now Earl of Oxford. Anne was not pleased. 
She did not object to party government when a Tory parliament 
allowed her to select congenial Tory ministers, but to 
Junto be compelled now to face at her Council Board these 

power, 1-708- disguised republicans, as she regarded the ultra Whigs, 
to her was slavery. She turned to Godolphin who 
still kept his |)lace at the head of the council largely on account 
of his friendship for Marlborough, and besought him to free her 
from the presence of these obnoxious ministers. But for three 
years she had to submit. When she showed signs of breaking 
away, the imperious Sarah stormed and went into hysterics, and 
Marlborough threatened to offer his resignation. So the queen 
bore her chains as meekly as her Stuart nature would allow, 
bravely keeping up her self respect by presiding in person at 
every meeting of her council, and insisting that every measure 
presented by her ministers sliould first be laid before her. 

In 1711, however, the good queen was permitted to see her 
distasteful fetters broken. The nation had grown weary of vic- 
tories that brought no peace, and when news came of 
Second fall the slaughter at Malplaquet, the feeling of triumph 
Junto. was stifled in the horror of the "deluge of blood." 

Marlborough and his Whig ministers were made respon- 
sible for the prolongation of the conflict, and under the inspiration 
of the hungry politicians of the opposition, the people were willing 
to believe Marlborough and his Jnnto capable of any villainy in 
order to further their own schemes, nor did it increase their 
popularity, that soon after Malplaquet, it began to be rumored 
that a third overture had been rejected in which Louis had vir- 
tually conceded everything except the one point of sending 
Frenclimen into Spain to fight his grandson. 

While matters were thus rapidly approaching the boiling point, 
a trivial affair, such as in ordinary times would have passed 
probably without notice, brought on the crisis. Dr. 
«xse''T7io^"'" Sacheverell, a popular clergyman of Tory sympathies, 
in a public address went oat of his way to attack the 
Revolution, the Protestant succession, and the Whig administra- 
tion. The Whigs thought that, in consideration of the existing 



1710] FALL OF MAKLBOBOUGH 853 

tension, such boldness ought not to pass unnoticed, and deter- 
mined to discipline the meddlesome preacher. Instead of leaving 
him to the courts, however, they foolishly resorted to the cum- 
bersome machinery of impeachment. The trial occupied parlia- 
ment for more than three weeks, and ended in a virtual acquittal. 
A nominal suspension of three years meant nothing in the pres- 
ence of the new and powerful friends whom the martyrdom of the 
noisy doctor brought to his support. To Anne the champion of 
old-time Toryism was a hero, and she marked him at once for 
preferment. She also welcomed the unmistakable evidences of 
the incoming tide, and without waiting for the return of the new 
parliament, dismissed Sunderland, son of the old earl of James 
II. 's time, Godolphin, and others. Harley was brought back as 
chief of the administration. St. John became Secretary of State, 
and Rochester, Lord President. Godolphin's son and Sunderland 
had married daughters of Marlborough, so that the dismissal of 
the two ministers was the beginning of the disruption of the 
"Family Party," as the ministry of Marlborough was called by 
his enemies. 

A marked change had also come over the household of the 
queen. Harley had placed at her side his kinswoman, Abigail 

Hill, Mrs. Masliam, whose gentle demeanor and quiet, 
^fiurchm tactful ways, in sach contrast with the explosions to 

which the stormy Sarah was liable, had steadily won 
the confidence and affection of her mistress, and had finally dis- 
placed the older fayorite altogether. The rupture came soon 
after the close of the Sacheverell trial, when the imperious duchess 
left the court for good. As Harley foresaw, the fall of Marlbor- 
ough soon followed the retirement of his wife. With the ministry 
and the Commons against him, the queen's favor gone, and peace 
at hand, his brilliant talents were no longer needed. For ten 
years he had been the virtual ruler of England, and had con- 
trolled the march of affairs on the continent as no emperor since 
the days of Charles V. But his influence had rested upon the 
universal fear of Louis; and now that he had dispelled the bogy- 
man, his own influence was gone. A host of libelers, in whose 
mean souls there was little appreciation for the duke's greatness, 



854 WOEK OF REVOLUTIOlSr COMPLETED [anue 

set their imaginations to work to invent charges of pecnlation, 

fraud, and even cowardice. The people who had long since 

turned from their idol, listened eagerly to these counsels of his 

enemies, and waited for his dismissal as eagerly as they had once 

joined in triumphal processions to St. Paul's in his honor. In 

vain he attempted to make peace with the now all powerful 

Tories. His overtures only lost him the respect of his remaining 

Whig friends, and enabled the Tories effectually to defeat his 

plans for the further conduct of the war. Yet when he returned 

to England at the close of the campaign of 1711, he had influence 

enough left to induce the Whig Lords to declare against peace. 

The Tory ministry, however, by the simple expedient of creating 

twelve new Tory peers, were able to swamp the Whig majority 

in the Lords, secure Marlborough's dismissal, and condemn him 

on a charge of peculation to the amount of £250,000. 

With the fall of the duke all serious opposition to the peace 

on the part of England ceased. The death of the Emperor 

Joseph in April 1711, had put the main point at issue 
The Treaties . . 

of Utrecht, between France and the allies in an entirely new light. 

1713, 

The Archduke Charles had not only succeded to the 
hereditary domain of the Austrian House of Hapsburg, but he was 
also chosen to succeed his brother as emperor. It was obviously 
inconsistent, therefore, for the allies to continue a war which had 
been undertaken to preserve the balance of power in Europe, in 
order further to expand the already vast domain of the House 
of Hapsburg. The recent birth of an heir to the elder brother of 
Phili]_3 of Spain, also greatly diminished the possibility of Philip's 
ever succeding to the French throne. The cause of the balance 
of power could be far better served, now that France had been 
seriously crippled, by leaving the Bourbon king on the Spanish 
throne. Accordingly, in March 1713 the series of treaties, known 
as the Peace of Utrecht, were signed by the plenipotentiaries of 
all the powers concerned, with the exception of the Emperor. 

These treaties were of vast moment not only to England and 
her colonies, but to all western Enrope, and cast their shadows 
clear across the eighteenth century and far into the nineteenth. 
France agreed: 



1714] THE TREATIES OF UTRECHT 855 

1. To recognize the Hanoverian succession. 

2. To cede to England St. Christopher, the French claim to 
the Hudson Bay territories, Acadia,^ and Newfoundland. 

3. To pledge herself to accept from Spain no commercial priv- 
ilege which would give her any advantage in her trade with Spain 
or the Spanish Indies. 

4. To renounce her claim of the right to seize a neutral vessel 
carrying the property of a hostile jDOwer. 

5. To restore his lands to the Duke of Savoy, and recognize 
him as King of Sicily. 

6. To recognize the Elector of Brandenburg as King of Prus- 
sia and consent to the enlargement of his domain in the west. 

Spain agreed: 

1. To cede Gibraltar and Minorca permanently to England. 

2. Not to alienate any of her South American possessions to 
France or any other European power. 

3. To confirm a recent Assiento by which the exclusive right 
of importing negro slaves into the Spanish Indies had been con- 
ceded to Great Britain, and to allow one English ship of 500 tons 
to trade yearly with the Spanish colonies. 

On March 6, 1714 the generals of Louis and Charles, also, made 
a definite treaty at Rastadt. And in September following, the 
whole empire acceded to a general treaty at Baden in Switzerland. 
By this treaty the Ehine became the definite boundary between 
France and South Germany; the upper Palatinate passed into the 
permanent possession of Bavaria; Austria was confirmed in her 
Italian possessions, and was allowed to annex the Spanish Nether- 
lands, subject to a joint occupation of the barrier cities with the 
Dutch. 

The gain to Great Britain was very great. The commercial 

privileges which were accorded her, alone more than compensated 

for the enormous debt of £34,000,000, which the war 

Peace of had Saddled upon posterity. The Protestant succession 

Utr'echt to i l j 

Great was Safe. The possession of Gibraltar and Minorca, 

Bi^itcii.Tt 

Port Mahon, secured the entrance to the Mediterra- 
nean. The withdrawal of the French claim to the Hudson Bay 

' Nova Scotia. 



856 WORK OF REVOLUTION" COMPLETED [anne 

territories adjusted the balance of power in North America, 
although Canada and the Mississippi valley were still to be fought 
for. The war, also, kept France from securing a partnership in 
the Spanish monopoly in the West Indies; and scored a new 
advantage for England in its commercial rivalry with the Dutch, 
by obtaining in the Spanish Indies besides other privileges the 
control of the slave trade. 

The "Good Queen Anne" did not long survive to enjoy the 
peace which she so dearly loved. She died August 1, 1714, a 

month before the last of the treaties was signed. The 
Arme"''^ gain of the Tories had been substantial and their 
4u|rm« 1, return to power, apparently, was to be permanent. In 

1711 parliament had enacted a "Property Qualification 
Bill," which forbade any one who did not possess an income from 
land of at least £600 a year to sit in the House of Commons for 
a county, or an income of £300 a year, for a borough. The 
restriction did much to perpetuate the power of the landed aristoc- 
racy, strengthening them against the rising influence of the 
commercial classes; it remained unchanged until 1858. In 1711, 
also, the Occasional Conformity Bill became a law, and thus, for 
a time at least, Whig nonconformists were excluded from the 
boroughs. Even the extreme Tories, the Jacobites, took heart, 
and under the inspiration of Bolingbroke's ^ leadership laid their 
plans to deliver the crown upon the death of Anne to her dis- 
possessed brother. But the end came before the Tory leaders 
were ready to act, and George of Hanover passed quietly to the 
English throne. 

Before Anne is dismissed, the England over which she ruled 
should receive a passing notice. During the seventeenth century 

the population had steadily increased. London, as 
Th^Engiand always, was the one great city of the kingdom. Fully 

one-tenth of the population were hived among her nar- 
row and ill-smelling streets. The commercial influences of the 
age had also markedly increased the population of the great seaport 
towns of the south and west. Yet Bristol, the second city of the 

1 Henry St. John was made Viscount Bolingbroke a short time before 
Anne's death. 



THE ENGLAND OP ANNE 857 

kingdom, could boast of only one seventeenth of the population of 
the great Thames port. In spite of its prosperity, however, Lon- 
don was not a pleasant place to live in. The great fire of Charles 
II. 's reign had offered the opportunity of securing wider streets 
and better drainage, and the government had formally commis- 
sioned the famous architect of the Eestoration, Sir Christopher 
Wren, to furnish plans for the new city. In the haste to rebuild, 
however. Wren's plans had been ignored, and in the reign of Anne 
the city with its teeming population of 700,000 souls was Just as 
dirty and unhealthful as ever; the death rate exceeded the birth 
rate each year, sometimes in plague years reaching the appalling 
total of 80,000. The ancient watch service, the duties of which 
were sustained by old men whom age and rheumatism had 
incapacitated for ordinary labor, had long since been outgrown. 
Eoistering young men of fashion made night hideous with their 
wild pranks, roaring through the streets, driving honest folk in 
terror into their homes, and upsetting the watch or beating him 
with his own staff should he attempt to interfere. Footpads 
lurked in the dark shadows; thieving and house-breaking were 
common, and robbing was frequently attended by murder. For, 
in consequence of the severe penalties which the harsh code of the 
day prescribed even for trivial offenses, the thief, if discovered, 
was generally certain to kill his victim rather than fall into the 
clutches of the law. The sword or rapier was a part of the dress 
of every gentleman; while "your good man" went equipped with 
a stout oaken cudgel or bludgeon, in the handling of which he was 
an artist. 

The condition of the poorer classes of the kingdom was far 
worse in Anne's reign than at the present time. Henry VIII. and 
Elizabeth had tried branding, ear piercing, and whip- 
ping to stop vagrancy. Elizabeth had allowed the 
"tramp" to be seized and reduced to servitude by any one who 
should put a collar on him. Charles II. had sent his vagrants 
to the colonies. In Queen Anne's reign they were pressed into 
the army and carried off to the continent to furnish marks for 
French cannon. The Poor Laws of Henry VIII. as left by Eliz- 
abeth, still remained in force. Each parish was compelled to look 



858 WORK OF REVOLUTION COMPLETED [anne 

after its own poor, keep up its "poor house," find work for those 
who could work, and apprentice the children. The number of 
"freeborn Englishmen" who were eared for in this way is start- 
ling, — 1,300,000, or one-fifth of the whole population. At the 
present time the proportion is about one to thirty. 

England was still an agricultural country; the great staple was 

grain. Prices depended upon the harvest, and fluctuations were 

frequent and violent. In 1699 wheat rose to 56s a 

The staples; quarter, but in 1702 an abundant harvest brought it 
grain and . -rtr i t . . 

wool. down agam to 25s. Wool was second m importance 

to grain. Even in the old Plantagenet days the English 
meadows had been famous for their sheep. 

Manufacturing was still in its infancy, due partly to the con- 
servatism of the people, and partly to the crude appliances used, 
Edward III. had brought over weavers from the 

Mamifac- Netherlands to show his people how to manufacture 

turing; wool, . i mi -r. ^ • 

cotton, iron, their own wool. I he Keformation, also, had greatly 

reinforced the colonies of foreign cloth workers. 
Englishmen, however, were loath to believe that as good cloth 
could be made in their own looms as on the continent, and in the 
sixteenth century it was found necessary for parliament to protect 
and encourage the home industry by special laws. The manu- 
facture of English cloth, thus favored, was steadily advancing. 
Leeds, though insignificant compared with the modern city, 
was already recognized as the center of the trade. The cotton 
industry was far behind the woolen, yet in William's reign the 
manufacture of cotton was of sufficient importance to secure 
the prohibition of Indian muslins and chintzes. The fibre 
was brought from the colonies to be made up in England. In 
1701 the exportation of cotton goods from England amounted to 
£23,000. 

The coal fields were as yet hardly laid ojDcn. Coal was used for 
cooking and heating, but iron smelting had to depend upon the 
forest oak. Sheffield was already famous for its cutlery, although 
the output was small. The weaving of silk, the making of glass. 
paper, and hats, received a direct impetus from the thousands of 
Huguenots who were driven out of France by the tyranny of Louis 



THE E]SrGLA]SrD OF ANNE 859 

XIV., and had brought with them to England their knowledge 
of these useful and important industries. 

The condition of the English laborer was far below the pres- 
ent; yet he was much better off than his brother on the continent. 
His pay was lOd a day: a soldier received 8d. A Erench 

The laborer. 

soldier received 3d. There was nothing, however, to 
encourage small savings; there were neither savings banks nor 
opportunities for small investments. Yet the living of the laborer 
was good ; meat was much cheaper than now, compared with the 
rate of wages. Tea and coffee had not yet come into common use. 
Wine was beyond the laborer; for beverage his choice was limited 
to spirits, cider, beer, milk, or water. Beer was the favorite. 
The quantity consumed per annum is startling; a quart a day, 
it was estimated, was brewed for every man, woman, and child in 
England. 

Tea had been brought into the country early in the seventeenth 
century by the Dutch, but it was still regarded as a great luxury, 

a gift for kings. Mr. Pepys mentions in his diary his 

first cup of tea as an occasion of some moment. In 
the eighteenth century, however, with the expansion of trade, tea 
drinking extended rapidly though the price was still high varying 
with the quality from 13 to 20 shillings per pound. 

Coffee entered England a little later than tea, having been 
first introduced at Oxford by a Cretan student just before the 

meeting of the Long Parliament. Its use, however, 

spread rapidly, and the coffee house soon became 
a social power. 

Anne's reign is famous for its brilliant authors. "There is 
probably no period so short, in which so many famous Avorks have 

been given to the world." It has been called the 
tanlfe'^of' "^^^gustan Age" of English Literature; an Augustan 
uuraWre ^^®' liowever, without its Augustus or its Maecenas. 

And yet though great patrons were not conspicuous, 
successful authorship had never before paid so well. Addison 
made his fortune by a single poem. Pope, Swift, Defoe, all the 
great literary lights of the age knew how to make themselves use- 
ful to the politicians who dealt in patronage, and freely devoted 



860 WORK OP REVOLUTION COMPLETED [anne 

their splendid talents to the pai'ty warfare of the day. Swift's 
Drapier Letters in 1724 forced George I. 's ministers to with- 
draw a project for furnishing Ireland with a new coinage known 
as "Wood's Pence," while Defoe's Time Born Englishman first 
opened the eyes of his fellow citizens to the real greatness of 
William's service to England. 

The introduction of Party government made the newspaper 
necessary. The occasional pamphlet had performed a real ser- 
Earhj neics- ^^°® ' ^^^^ '^^ ^^^^ ^^^ every way desirable to secure a large 
papers. qj^^ regular circle of readers in order to present the 

purposes and plans of rival party leaders to the public. It was in 
this service that pens such as were wielded by Swift or Addison, 
Bolingbroke or Defoe could be of most service. Thus in 1709 was 
born Steele's Tatler, more journal of literary criticism than news- 
paper, to give way in 1711 to the more famous Spectator of Addison 
and Steele. This last was a more ambitious sheet; it appeared 
daily and performed the work both of the modern magazine and 
the modern newspaper, combining dignified discussions of Milton's 
Paradise Lost, or the ancient ballad of Chevy Chase, or reflec- 
tions on Westminster Abbey, or a discussion of the Exchange or 
the Bank of England, with criticisms of the outrageous hoops 
worn by the ladies of the period or of the custom of wearing 
patches on the face. In the next era the party organ pure and 
simple appears in the famous Craftsman. 



CHAPTER III 



WAL-POLE AND THE FIRST ERA OE WHIG RULE 

GEORGE I., 1714-1727 
GEORGE II., 1127-174'i 

DESCENT OF THE HOUSE OF HANOVER 

James I. 

\ 

i I 

Charles I. Elizabeth=Frederick V., Elector 

I of the Palatine 

Sophia = Ernest Augvistus, 
""' d. 1714 I Elector of Hanover 

George I. 
King of England 1714-1727 

George II., 1727-1760 

Frederick, Prince of Wales 
d. 1751 

George IH., 1760-1830 
1^ 

III I 

George IV. William IV. Edward, Duke of Kent Ernest Augustus, King 

1820-1830 1830-1837 | of Hanover 1837-1851 

ViCTORiA=Prince Albert of 
1837-1901 Saxe Coburg 

With the accession of the House of Hanover the political waters, 
which had been kept stirred up for more than a generation, 
speedily cleared. As long as Anne remained upon her father's 
throne, there was hope that at the last moment the affection of 
the people might be turned to the dispossessed prince, who what- 
ever his faults was not responsible for the father's blunders and 
above all things was not a foreigner. But with Anne gone, and 
the House of Hanover actually in possession, all hope of a repeti- 
tion of the peaceful restoration of 1660 vanished. Scarcely more 
promising was the prospect of regaining the Stuart throne by 
violence. The downfall of the supremacy which France had so 
long enjoyed in Europe, the opening of new issues, which drove 
the French government to seek an alliance with the Hanoverian 
king, instead of plotting for his overthrow, denied the Jacobites all 
farther hope of French support. If Scotland were still independ- 

86] 



862 FIRST ERA OF WHIG RULE [George 1. 

ent, the Jacobite sympathies of the Plighland clans might be 
used to advantage, and a foothold be won here for the Stuarts in 
spite of the apathy of their old ally of France. But the organic 
union of England and Scotland had greatly diminished the 
probability of final success in any attempt to rouse the clansmen, 
and although the thing was tried the year after the accession of 
George, it resulted in complete disaster. 

But more serious still for the future of the Jacobite cause, the 
last years of the recent wars had witnessed a very marked change 
in the temper of the English people; |3ai"tly the effect 
tn%^^tr(wt' '^^ ^^^ lassitude which naturally followed so many years 
u^lfjH^^ of high tension, and partly the effect of tlie new oppor- 
tunities of commercial enterprise, which drew the energy 
of the nation into other channels than those of politics and war. 
The age of sentiment had passed ; an age of cynical indifference 
was at hand, wherein fervor was regarded with suspicion and 
devotion as hypocrisy, wherein the easy-going indifference which 
the Restoration had applied to morals was now applied to politics. 

"For forms of government let fools contest, 
Whate'er is best administered is best." 

A worthy sentiment perhaps, as the courtier poet of Anne's 
reign meant it, but unfortunately, to the average politician of 
the time, "best" meant that he got his share of the government 
patronage, or worse, public plunder, and no questions were asked. 
"Patriots!" sneered Walpole, the great minister of George I., "I 
can make any number of them in a moment." Theories of state 
or church, or doctrines of royal right, no longer affected men as 
much as the fact of power and the immediate prospect of personal 
profit. Englishmen were no longer willing to die for a sentiment, 
but they would girdle the globe in pursuit of trade. Hence the 
Jacobite found little support for his now antiquated doctrine of 
king-right by divine appointment; but Hanoverian George, 
although never loved, hardly resjsected, although a foreigner who 
knew little of English and less of English institutions, stood for 
the new material prosperity which had followed the successful 
issue of the late war; and the nation, more bent upon money-get- 
ting than king-making, had no wish to disturb him. 



1715] END OF OLD TORY PAETY 863 

The same causes which stifled the last hopes of the Jacobites, 

also permanently retired the old Tories as an active element in 

the political life of the nation. With William or Anne 

on the throne, whose political sympathies were colored 

old Tory ^i|;h sometliinff of the old ideas of royal prerogative, 

party and '^ j i. o ■> 

permanent there was still place for a party that stood for the 

triumph of ^ i j 

the frhigs. defense of royal autliority against the encroachments 
of parliament, or of the Anglican Church against the 
encroachments of nonconformists. With George, however, the 
Tory's brief was gone. The new king was fully aware of the debt 
which he owed the Whigs, and, without taking trouble to com- 
prehend the English Constitution or enter into the merits of party 
controversy, he committed himself unreservedly to the control of 
the Whig leaders and allowed them to fill the places of the govern- 
ment with their partisans. Furthermore, he knew so little English 
that he left the council chamber to his ministers and accepted 
their decisions with full confidence that they understood better 
than he what was best for the crown and best for the nation. The 
more violent Tories like Bolingbroke and Ormonde fled to the con- 
tinent. Some like Sir William Wyndham remained to gather 
together the wreck of the party in the forlorn hope of holding the 
Jacobite wing together. But this only hastened the passing of 
the older Toryism. The great bulk of the party had never seri- 
ously desired the Stuart restoration. They understood full well 
that a Jacobite triumph would mean the repudiation of the national 
debt and the destruction of the public credit. Even the clergy 
and the country squire felt their ardor cool in the presence of the 
new and vast interests of the commercial classes; interests which 
were not so widely divorced from their own that they could afford 
to imperil them for the sake of sentiment. 

The story was fully told by the results of the first general 
election of the new reign. Barely fifty members of the old Tory 
Dissolution following Were returned. Bolingbroke heard the news 
Sarfu^"'^ across the channel and from his safe retreat wrote, 
March, 1715. "The Tory party is gone." It was ihe quietus of older 
Toryism, written by the man who more than any other living 
Englishman represented its aims and its spirit. The party now 



864 FIRST ERA OF WHIG RULE [georqeI. 

liad no excuse for existence, and no one saw the fact more clearly 
than Bolingbroke, or felt more certainly that a revival of Toryism 
would be not only useless but aimless. With Ormonde, therefore, 
he turned to find occupation in the train of the exiled Stuart; 
while the men who had forined the body of the party folded their 
tents and abandoned' the field, leaving the Whigs to quarrel among 
themselves over the spoils of victory. 

The overwhelming character of the Whig victory and the long, 
unbroken tenure of Whig rule which followed, were of the gravest 

importance in the future history of the constitution, in 
tumai sig- the permanent establishment of those principles for 
the Whig which Eussell had laid down his life and Shaftesbury 

had gone into exile. In the long era of Whig supremacy 
the theories of the Revolution fast hardened into custom and cus- 
tom soon passed into unwritten law. The old constitution, 
unchanged in form, was gradually supplanted by a new constitu- 
tion of conventions, or understandings, not recognized by the statute 
law, yet intrenched in the habit of political thought of the natiou. 
In the theory of the constitution the executive power still lay in 
the hands of the king, but in the new unwritten constitution it 
was left in the liands of a small committee of ministers, the cab- 
inet, who held their position by reason of the confidence and sup- 
port of a majority of the House of Commons. The House of Lords, 
also, lost its coordinate power as a legislative body. The ministry, 
controlled by the Commons, and itself in control of the executive, 
had learned the trick of forcing its measures upon the Upper 
House, by resorting to the expedient which the Tories first devised, 
of creating enough new peers to swamp the opposition; a measure 
which it has been hardly necessary to use since, for the threat gener- 
ally has been sufficient to compel the opposition lords to acquiesce 
when once confronted by a united and determined House of 
Commons. 

The supremacy of the Whig party, however, was by no means 
an unmixed good. The moral tone of the era was too feeble to 
resist the ordinary effects of overconfidence on the j^art of the 
accredited leaders of the triumphant party. The j)eaceful waters 
of the political pool became stagnant; security bred corruption to 



CHARACTEK OF WHIG RULE 865 

which the local institutions of the eighteenth century all too read- 
ily lent themselves. In the counties freeholders had votes ; but under 

the continned concentration of estates the number of 
of the Whig freeholders was rapidly diminishing. In the boronghs 

the franchise was fixed by no general principle. In a 
few towns manhood suffrage prevailed; in more, household suffrage ; 
in most, the franchise had fallen into the hands of self -perpetuating 
corporations. The proportion of representation was even more 
arbitrary and irregular; an obscure Cornish village could boast of 
as many members in parliament as one of the great shires of the 
kingdom. Outside of London, Westminster, Bristol, and a few 
other towns, where some electoral freedom still existed, the local 
administration lay in the hands of a close oligarchy, who in the 
absence of any moral motive readily yielded to the control of the 
great Whig proprietors, and thus easily fell a victim to bribery. 
So common was corruption, so 'profound the sleep of public con- 
science, that the barter of seats in parliament carried with it little 
opprobrium. For the most part the trading was done without 
attempts at disguise or concealment. Even the staid old town of 
Oxford thought it not beneath her dignity to advertise her seats 
for sale. Rival families spent vast sums in electoral contests. 
West Indian planters and East Indian merchants poured out 
money like water when their vested interests demanded a free 
hand in an approaching parliament. Parliament, moreover, 
always sat with closed doors; the report of its debates was forbid- 
den, and if perchance some rumors of the nefarious log rolling 
Avithin ever got beyond the walls, a swarm of subsidized scribblers 
sat with pens ready dipped in honey or venom to defend patrons 
or attack their detractors. 

The clergy, which in ordinary times may be counted upon to 
sound the first note of warning against corruption and wickedness 

in high places, manifested all the moral lassitude which 
ofThecufi psi'vaded other ranks of public service. The church 

"slept and rotted in peace." The establishment was 
still revered as a semi -political institution; but the clergy as a body 
were despised. The great landowners used their right of appoint- 
ment to church livings to supply snug incomes for younger sons, 



806 FIRST ERA OF WHIG RULE [gkorge I. 

who though in orders retained all the vices and faults of their class, 
drawing the tithes, often of more than one parish, and leaving the 
work to half fed curates. The great house had its chaplain, who was 
only a higher grade of menial, who was expected to leave the table 
when the sweets were served; who fell an easy victim to the amiable 
manners of his fellow servants and generally ended by marrying a 
waiting maid. Bishoprics were listed as political patronage to be 
gained by lobbying and intrigue, nor were the characters of the 
men who succeeded in winning the prizes above the methods used. 
The bishop lived in his palace, and rode to his cathedral in coach 
and four, attended by servants in livery. His parish clergy or his 
curates he left to struggle in wretched poverty, too often furnish- 
ing the type of ecclesiastical vagabond familiar to the readers of 
the eighteenth century novels. The bishop himself moved in the 
highest circles, intrigued, fawned, palavered, and apologized when 
he mentioned his wife in good society. Yet all the clergy were not 
time-servers ; there were among them still many men eminent for 
piety and learning, who gave themselves freely and with purest 
motive to the service of the church ; but such men were respected 
not for their cloth but for themselves. The preaching, however, 
even of the best, was tinctured with the prevailing rationalism. 
It was dnll and lifeless, and devoted largely to answering the 
cavils of the fashionable deism of the times, rather than to 
feeding the devotional spirit of the people or laying the founda- 
tions of personal righteousness. Butler's "Analogy" fairly repre- 
sents the direction in which the best thought of the church was 
exerting its energy. Few of the great churchmen of the age, 
however, were leading the thoughtful, useful life of the revered 
Bishop of Bristol.^ Churches were abandoned to decay; the 
people, left with teachers whom they had ceased to respect, or with 
no teachers at all, lapsed into a state which bordered on heathen- 
ism. Among the nonconformists religious life was of far higher 
tone, but their number was diminishing and the old fervor cool- 
ing; enthusiasm was not popular. 

1 The Analogy was published in 1736. Butler was made Bishop of 
Bristol in 1738. 



GEJSTERAL CHARACTER OF ERA 867 

In general there is little in the era of the first Georges to 
attract the lover of his kind; court annals abound in materials for 

the gossip, or the sensation monger; politics are hope- 
character lessly Corrupt; religion is a hollow cant or a lifeless 

deism ; the home life of the people, declining. The age 
of heroism, the age of sublime themes whether in literature or life, 
has passed. The age that could produce "The Paradise Lost," 
has given way to the age that can produce "The Eape of the 
Lock;" the age that could produce "The Pilgrim's Progress," to 
an age that can produce "The Travels of Lemuel Gulliver;" the 
age that could produce Oliver Cromwell has given way to an age 
that can produce Kobert Walpole. 

,_Yet though morally decadent, though to the lover of goodness 
or greatness, a dreary wilderness where selfishness, insincerity, and 
cynicism reign, the era of the Georges was yet a preparation for 
the greater era to come. In the commercial treaties which 
were secured as a result of the war of the Spanish succession, and 
in the later treaties of the era of Chatham, English statesmen laid 
anew the foundations of England's commercial greatness, enlarg- 
ing and strengthening the entire scope of colonial enterprise and 
preparing for the advent of a nev/ England beyond the seas. Of 
even greater importance, both to the new England to be, as well as 
to the old England of the United Kingdom, was the final acceptance 
in the political creed of the nation of those principles of parlia- 
mentary government which the Whig leaders had wrought out of 
their great revolution. Yet the moral life of England was not 
dead, not even paralyzed; it was only sleeping, worn out, utterly 
exhausted by the struggle of the century passed. England needed 
rest to prepare for the era of Whitfield and the Wesleys, of Wil- 
berforce and Howard, of Bright and Cobden. 

The great Whig leaders were fully represented in the first min- 
istry of George I. Marlborough, the recognized chief of the party, 
was there, but his strength was broken and his splendid career vir- 
tually ended. ^ The labor of organizing the new government fell 
to younger and more vigorous men. Lord Townshend, as Northern 

^ Marlborough lived on in premature dotage until 1722, a mournful 
wreck of the once splendid duke. 



868 FIRST ERA OP WHIG RULE [george I. 

Secretary of State/ was virtually chief minister; with him were 
associated Shrewsbury, Sunderland, Pulteney, and Eobert Wal- 

pole. The last, about whose career the reigns of the 
hlmd^rMnfs- ^^'^^ ^^^ Georges center, was born of Yorkshire parent- 
^waimu'^^^ ^S® ^^ good family. He had come to manhood in the 

stifling atmosphere which marked the period of the later 
Stuarts, and had learned to suspect goodness and despise senti- 
ment with the contempt of a hardened politician. He was 
endowed with sound Judgment, although prone to be misled at 
times by a habit of cynicism, which he shared with most of the 
prominent men of his age. His business abilities, however, were 
of a high order and his influence even in the reign of Anne was of 
moment sufficient to secure him the position of Secretary of War 
in the Whig ministry which Marlborough and Godolphin called to 
their support in 1708. He took office at the accession of George 
as Paymaster of the Forces, but later, October 1715, was advanced 
to the more important position of Chancellor of the Exchequer. 

The parliament which met in March, 1715, reviewed and con- 
demned the negotiations by which the Tories had forced the 

Treaty of Utrecht upon the country. They also passed 
Vindictive- -o-neA'T' 

nessofthe Bills of Attainder against Bolinsrbroke and Ormonde: 
Whigs. ° 

while Harley, now Earl of Oxford, the late Lord High 

Treasurer of Anne, was impeached and sent to the Tower. The 
prosecution, however, was without other ground than party vin- 
dictiveness, and after dragging along for two years, the case was 
finally dropped. A belated attempt of the Jacobites to 
attempt of raise Scotland in the name of "James VII," still 

1715. . 

further increased the strength of the Whigs. In Eng- 
land Jacobitism was dead; and although Lord Derwentwater, a 
grandson of Charles II., and a few country gentlemen took up 
arms in Northumberland and Lancashire, the great mass of the 
Tory gentry looked on with indifferent apathy, while the Whig 

' The Secretary of State for the Northern Department dealt with the 
Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Poland, and Russia. The Secretary for 
the Southern Department dealt with France, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, 
Portugal, and Turkey. Both dealt with home affairs. In 1782 the North- 
ern Secretary became the Foreign Secretary, and the Southern Secretary 
became the Home Secretary. 



1716] THE SEPTENNIAL ACT 869 

government set itself in motion to crush the rising. On November 
13, 1715 the English Jacobites were compelled to lay down their 
arms at Preston on the Ribble. On the same day the Scottish 
Jacobites under command of John Erskine Earl of Mar, "Bob- 
bing John," were effectively checked in an indecisive action at 
Sheriff muir. In December James appeared on the scene, but he 
had no faith in his cause and was without the courage to put him- 
self at the head of a forlorn hope. On the 4th of February with 
Mar, he sailed away again, leaving Derwentwater and his com- 
panions in arms to make the easiest terms they could with the 
hangman. 

This ill-fated and ill-managed expedition proved two things: 
first that the Jacobite leaders were utterly reckless and incom- 
petent and unworthy of confidence; and second, that 
niaiAct!"^^ the English gentry did not intend to risk their necks 
ay, 1716. ^^^^ ^^^^ Stuart Pretender ; — facts which greatly strength- 
ened the Whigs and their Hanoverian dynasty. Yet so little 
enthusiasm was there over the phlegmatic George and his ugly 
mistresses, that in the spring of 1716 the Whig leaders determined 
not to risk the return of a Tory majority when tlie three years 
limit prescribed by law should have expired, but to make sure of 
retaining the power in their own hands by extending the parlia- 
mentary term to seven years. The act, known as the "Septennial 
Act," brought out the severest criticism; and yet, that it still 
remains the law of England, may be taken as fair evidence that 
the wisdom of a longer parliamentary term has been justified by 
experience. 

The Whigs were destined to suffer the lot of most great 

parties when left without opposition. They soon began to quarrel 

among themselves; and in 1717 finally split into two 

Split in the factions, the one rallying around Townshend and 
Whig pa7-ty. ' -^ ° 

Walpole, and the other around Stanhope and Sunder- 
land. The cause of the quarrel was the question of the attitude 
which England should take toward the wars of the Hanoverian 
Electorate. Since the beginning of the century, Sweden had been 
at war with Denmark and Norway. In 1715 Denmark sold 
Bremen and Verden to the Elector George This purchase 



870 PIRST ERA OF WHIG RULE [george I. 

involved Hanover in the great northern quarrel, since Denmark 
had only recently acquired these regions by conquest, and the king 
of Sweden was by no means inclined to renounce his claims. The 
Act of Settlement of 1701 had sought to protect England against 
complications which might arise from the position of Hanover 
upon the continent by forbidding the king to involve England in 
war for his foreign possessions without the consent of parliament. 
When, therefore, in 1716 George proposed to send an English fleet 
into the Baltic to defend his new acquisitions, he met a deter- 
mined opposition in the Townshend faction. As a result Towns- 
hend was forced out of his secretaryship, and compelled to accept 
the viceroyalty of Ireland, while Stanhope, who was iu sympathy 
with the king, became the Secretary of State for the Northern 
Department. In 1717 Stanhope succeeded in concluding a Triple 
Alliance between England, France, and Holland, and virtually 
committed England to the support of Hanover against Sweden. 
Townshend, Walpole, and Methuen withdrew from the ministry, 
and joining with the Prince of AVales, began a furious opposition 
in parliament against the foreign policy of the government. 

Both Stanhope and Sunderland, the First Lord of the Treasury, 
were able men, and under their leadership the Whig policy of 
undoing the work of the Tories continued even more 
The Stan- vigorously than under Townshend. In January 1719 
voiicif^""^^ they swept away the Occasional Conformity Act, and 
even proposed to abolish the old Test Act in favor of 
the nonconformists ; but public opinion was not yet ready to throw 
the door wide open, though willing to open it enough for Protes- 
tant dissenters of easy conscience to squeeze through. Another 
measure of the Stanhope ministry also failed, which if carried, 
by restoring to the House of Lords its power as a coordinate 
branch of the legislature, would have completely changed the char- 
acter of the English Constitution. This measure, the "Peerage 
Bill," proposed to take from the crown the right of creating peers 
at will, by limiting the number which could be made at any one 
time to six, and replacing the sixteen elective Scottish peers by 
twenty-five hereditary peers. Largely owing to the vigorous 
attacks of Walpole the Peerage Bill was defeated by a vote of 369 



1718-1721] FOREIGN" POLICY OF STANHOPE 871 

to 177. The opposition had now proved its strength, and Stan- 
hope to save himself was glad to accept a reconciliation with his old 
colleagues. In 1720 both Walpole and Townshend were taken 
back into office. 

The foreign policy of the Stanhope ministry was even more 
thoroughgoing in its Whiggism than its domestic policy. In 

the Triple Alliance we once more greet the genius of 
mSJistnf *^^® third William. France had been compelled not 
pouJy^^ only to abandon the policy of Louis XIV., but to 

reverse it altogether. The Eegent Orleans, who was 
interested in securing his own succession in case the young King 
Louis XV. should die without direct issue, and therefore needed 
the friendship of England, was entirely willing not only to assure 
England and Holland of the separation of the crowns of Frauce 
and Spain, but also to pledge himself to expel the Pretender from 
French territory and support the Hanoverian succession. The 
Spanish Minister Alberoni still further threw the game into 
the hands of the Whig ministers by seizing Sardinia in 1717, and 
Sicily in 1718, thus reopening issues once settled by the Treaty 
of Utrecht, and driving the emperor to cast in his lot with the 
Triple Alliance. Spain, like France seventeen years earlier, was 
now isolated; but unlike France, she had neither resources nor 
prestige on her side, and when in 1718 the English Admiral Byng 
destroyed her fleet off Cape Pesaro, with her territories invaded 
both by England and France, she was glad to make peace, and 
accept the partition of the Spanish dominions as prescribed by 
the Treaty of Utrecht, leaving Sicily to the emjjeror, and Sardinia 
to the House of Savoy. 

The same good fortune attended the Stanhope ministry in deal- 
ing with the Baltic states. In December 1718 the romantic 

Charles XII. was shot before Frederikshald in Norway, 
End of the ^ c^ i ,. i 

northern and Sweden, no longer feared, soon dropped back into 

struggle. . , . . 

its old position of second rate importance. One by one 
the northern powers made peace; some like England passed into 
active alliance with Sweden against Eussia, which was already the 
great threatening power of the north. In 1721 Peter the Great, 
also, consented to lay down his arms, and by the Treaty of Nystad 



872 FIRST ERA OF WHIG RULE [georgb I. 

completed tlie quieting of the Baltic. Thus once more the policy 
of AVilliam had been vindicated, and equilibrium had been restored 
in Europe. 

The triumph of the. Stanhope ministry seemed complete. Eng- 
land was respected; the conventions of Utrecht reenacted and the 
peace of Europe placed upon a firmer foundation than 
The ''Smith ever. Out of the very triumph of the ministry, how- 
«!.';'"'';/"'* ever, was to come its undoing. As the continual suc- 

0/ tlie Stan- ' i=> 

impeminis- ^ess of the allied arms assured the issue of the Spanish 
war, and Englishmen began to understand that the 
House of Hanover had come to stay, public confidence increased 
rapidly, and in the assurance of good times coming, a feverisli 
desire to get in ahead of the tide by means of happy investments 
took possession of the people. In the main the fever of specula- 
tion was directed toward mercantile adventures in Spanish v/aters. 
For two centuries Englishmen had been taught to believe in the 
untold wealth of the Spanish seas; it was part of the accepted com- 
mercial creed of the age. But up to the signing of the Treaties of 
Utrecht, Englishmen had entered these seas only as poachers with 
their lives in their hands. Still the rewards were correspondingly 
great, and with the declining ability of Spain to patrol these 
waters and maintain her old-time monopoly, this illicit trade had 
steadily increased. In the year 1711, Ilarley, then of Anne's Tory 
ministry, had sought to turn this trade to account, by funding a 
floating debt of £10,000,000 upon tlie basis of securing by grant 
of parliament the monopoly to a company known as the South Sea 
Company. Two years later this child of the Tory administration 
was further endowed with the Assiento, which had been wrung 
from Spain as one of the conditions of the Treaty of Utrecht. In 
the meantime, while the great companies continued to coin wealth 
out of the commercial advantages which had been won for them by 
English blood, the public debt had continued to pile up until it 
had reached the grand sum total of £36,000,000. Each ministry 
in turn had wrestled with the vexatious problem, and by every 
possible scheme known to the financiers of the eighteenth century, 
had sought to lighten the ever-increasing burden. When, therefore, 
in 1719, the directors of the South Sea Company came forward 



1730] SOUTH SEA BUBBLE 873 

with a scheme to buy up the outstanding securities of the govern- 
ment to the amount of £32,000,000, paying the present holders in 
South Sea stock, and agreeing to a reduction of the interest from 
seven and eight to five per cent, and after 1727 to four per cent, 
Aislabie, the Lord Treasurer, eagerly accepted the proposal and 
consented to use the influence of the government to assure tbe 
public of the prosperity of the company, or in modern phrase to 
"boom" its stock, in order that the present holders of the govern- 
ment annuities might be induced more readily to exchange these 
safe investments for South Sea stock. Large sums accordingly 
were spent in bribing ministers and "fixing" members of parlia- 
ment, in order to secure a formal approval of the scheme. The 
Bank of England, also, had to be reckoned with as a vigorous rival 
for government credit, and when it entered the field offering, in 
addition to the lower rate of interest, a direct cash bonus, the 
South Sea Company took np the challenge, and outbid its rival by 
promising a bonus of £7,500,000. 

In 1720 parliament gave its approval and South Sea stock at 
once rose enormously. Its shares jumped from £100 to £1,000. 

The fever of speculation seized the public, and disap- 
The raising . ^ i rv< • 

of the pointed bidders, not to be baiSed in their eager expecta- 

tion of sudden wealth, plunged into all kinds of "wild 
cut" schemes of turning speedy fortunes. Specious "bubble com- 
panies" multiplied rapidly; the public were in a gullible mood, and 
madly invested in projects for "importing jackasses from Spain," 
in projects for securing perpetual motion, and for making salt water 
fresh; one concern went into the market to sell stock "for an 
undertaking which should in due time be revealed." The South 
Sea Company began to fear for its own credit, and attacked some 
of the bubble companies as illegaL Then the reaction came, and 
the whole edifice of cards came tumbling down. South Sea stock 
"slumped" from £1,000 a share to £135. Universal panic and 

distress followed. Many rogues had profited; but manv 
Collapse of iiiii 

the Stanhope honest people had been caught and saw their propertv 

swept away of a night. The government in particular 

became an object of general execration. The Stanhope ministrv 

was attacked. Aislabie was expelled from parliament upon a 



874 FIRST ERA OF WHIG RULE [George L 

charge of "infamous corruption," Craggs the Postmaster Gen- 
eral committed suicide. Stanhope, while defending himself in the 
House of Lords, fell down in an apoplectic fit and died next day. 
Sunderland was charged with corruption but was acquitted. His 
name, however, was too closely associated with the luckless min- 
istry; he was compelled to retire.^ 

Walpole and Townshend, fortunately for themselves, were not 
members of the ministry when the scheme was first set on foot. 
Toivnsiiend's Walpolc had Openly denounced it, and sought to expose 
second j^g fQiiy^ Men who had been deaf then, now turned to 

J^',?'*'/'/'' tiiHi for assistance. He was made First Lord of the 
wreck, nn. Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer, while 
Townshend was advanced to Stanhope's position of Secretary of 
State. The new ministry set to work to restore public credit. 
The directors of the company were compelled to forfeit £2,000,000 
from their private estates; the government renounced its claims 
to the promised bonus, most of which had not yet been paid. Thus 
the company, by meeting its debts, was enabled to continue its legit- 
imate line of business and was soon again upon a solid basis. The 
government regained the public confidence and quiet was restored. 

Of the men to whom the administration was now entrusted 
Walpole was unquestionably the ablest. He understood commerce 
and finance, and clearly grasped the importance of 
Tifcf^'^'^ "making the exportation of English manufactures, and 
the importation of the commodities used in the manu- 
facturing of them, as practicable and easy as possible." This 
policy, which by Walpole's inspiration was thus laid down in the 
address of the king to his second parliament, explains both the 
success of Walpole and the long tenure of power which he now 
enjoyed. In 1721 he induced parliament to admit thirty-eight 
difi'erent articles of raw material free of duty. The following year 
he abolished upwards of a hundred export duties. He also intro- 
duced the svstem by Avliich imported goods are allowed to remain 

* Charles Spencer, third earl of Sunderland, not to be confused with 
his more famous or rather infamous father, Robert Spencer, second earl of 
Sunderland, the minister successively of Charles II., James II., and 
William III., who had retired in 1697. 



1730] PEACE POLICY OF WALPOLE 875 

in warehouse in bond until sold by the importer. Upon some raw 
materials as silk, he allowed a rebate when exported again in the 
manufactured form. He also allowed the colonies to import. lum- 
ber free. In 1730 he permitted the Carolinas to export their rice 
to any part of Europe; and shortly the rice of America, which 
before could be sold only in the mother country, drove the rice of 
Egypt and Italy from the European market. Above all, he 
realized the full importance of peace to any durable national pros- 
perity. "The most pernicious circumstances," he said, "in which 
this country can be, are those of war; as we must be losers while it 
lasts, and can not be great gainers when it ends." Elizabeth her- 
self was not more determined to keep England at peace, and to the 
very end of his career, in spite of the never ceasing pressure 
exerted by a determined "Jingo" opposition, the great minister 
held to his peace policy. 

The increasing prosperity of the country soon justified the 

soundness of these measures. The annual exports of England 

doubled in thirty years. In George XL's reign the 

Success of ■J J o o 

Waipoie's exports of Pennsylvania increased from £15,000 to half 

uoli/Cu 

a million. The trade of Jamaica at the close of the 
century equaled that of all the American colonies put together 
at the beginning of George I. 's reign. The other colonies shared 
in this prosperity in accordance with the importance of their prod- 
ucts, and began to pour a new wealth into the lap of the mother 
country. The increase in population, also a symptom of pros- 
perity, kept pace with the development of new sources of wealth. 
Manchester and Birmingham doubled in a generation. Liverpool 
sprung at one bound, — it sounds like a tale of the American west, 
— from an unknown country town to the third port in the kingdom. 
Land, also, increased in value and rents rose proportionately. In 
Burke's time rents had risen fifty per cent over the prices which 
had prevailed at the beginning of the century. 

The same sound businesslike principles were applied to the 
management of the several offices of the government. In spite of 
Thrift of the increase of wealth upon all sides, the most rigid 
istration. economy was followed in the expenditure of funds; the 
debt was steadily reduced and taxes lessened wherever possible. 



876 PIRST ERA OF WHIG RULE [gkorgeI. 

At the death of George I. in 1727, the public debt had been 
reduced by £20,000,000. 

After the collapse of the South Sea Bubble, the remaining years 
of the first George's reign passed quietly enough. When the 
machinery ran so smoothly and so noiselessly, there was 
ofoeor^l^i little for parliament to do; less for the professional 
agitators. In 1724 there was but one division in the 
House of Commons. In 1722 another Jacobite plot was unearthed, 
known as the Atterbury Plot, from one of its principal promoters, 
Francis Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester. But although many 
arrests were made and the Habeas Corpus Act was suspended for 
a year, there was only one execution. So profound was the sense 
of security that Bolingbroke was permitted to return the next 
year. The year of Bolingbroke's return was also marked by a quar- 
rel in the ministry which resulted in the retirement of Carteret to 
the viceroyalty of Ireland; Thomas Pelham Duke of Newcastle 
first came into prominence as his successor in the Southern Secre- 
taryship. Henry Pelham, a brother of Newcastle, was made Sec- 
retary at War. 

On June 10, 1727 George I. was suddenly stricken while 
traveling in Hanover. It has been the fashion of gossippy essayists 
and others, to poke much fun at the first George and 
George I., his "Maypolc" and his "Elephant;" but for the time 
' " ' he was by no means a bad king. He was not a striking 
personality, either physically or intellectually; yet he was diligent 
in business, quiet, and cautious. It is true that he was without 
enthusiasm himself and without ability to awaken it in others. 
But enthusiasm in the early eighteenth century was at a discount; 
the sentiment of loyalty was fast disappearing; the veil had been 
hard stripped from monarchy, and Englishmen were coming to 
look at the thing in the cold practical sense of Defoe's couplet: 

"Titles are shadows, crowns are empty things; 
The good of subjects, is the end of kings." 

What was wanted was a lay figure upon which to hang the crown 
and trappings of royalty, and stupid, phlegmatic George, who 
cared not a stiver for the dio-nities of the crown so dear to the 



17254730] TOWNSHEJ^D AND WALPOLB 877 

Stuart heart, who was content to let his ministers conduct the 

government as long as they let him visit his beloved Herrenhaiisen 

occasionally and confer fat titles upon his ugly mistresses, was all 

in all just the man for the emergency. 

The accession of George II. made little difference in the drift 

of English politics. The new king was a vigorous hater, "full of 

fire and temper," and an utter "stranger to benev- 
The sue- 
cession of olence." He had hated his father while he lived ; he 

hated the English as a race of "king killers and repub- 
licans," He hated his father's great minister, and thought to get 
along without him. But his clever wife, Caroline of Anspach, an 
honest, true-hearted woman, who understood the English as her 
husband did not, and knew the value of Walpole, used her influ- 
ence so wisely, that the second Townshend ministry was continued 
virtually without a break. 

Since the collapse of the Stanhope ministry, Townshend had 
in the main continued to direct foreign affairs. His course, how- 
ever, had not run over smoothly. The proud Elizabeth 

Qudrrel of <j j. 

Townshend of Farnese, whom Carlyle has dubbed the "Termagant 
of Spain," who ruled not only her husband but his 
kingdom as well, smarting under the humiliation of Spanish 
defeat, in 1725 succeeded in persuading the emperor to enter into 
an alliance with Spain against France and England, with the two- 
fold object of striking at England's commercial supremacy in 
India and China by bolstering up the Ostend East India Company, 
and of robbing England of her gains in the Mediterranean by 
recovering Gibraltar. The reply of Townshend was the counter 
League of Hanover, in which England, France, and Prussia, joined 
later by Sweden, Denmark, and Holland, united to confront the 
new union of Spain and Austria. Walpole had opposed the League 
of Hanover, and with Cardinal Fleury, the able minister of Louis 
XV., continued to struggle for peace. The war spirit, however, 
was again quickening in the nation and wily politicians were, as 
always, at hand to fan the glowing embers into flames for purely 
political purposes. Townshend soon had a vigorous and noisy fol- 
lowing; in 1730 the tension became so great that George had to 
decide which of the two ministers should be retained. He held on 



878 FIRST ERA OF WHIG RULE [George II. 

to Walpole, and Townshend retired to his country seat in Norfolk, 
— forsaking politics for turnips. 

The era which was marked by the growiug estrangement of 

Walpole and Townshend, is famous for the growth of the new Tory 

party. Bolingbroke's brief experience as a Jacobite 

The birth of 

the new plotter had satisfied him of the uselessness of support- 

Tory 'DdTty, 

ing longer the lost cause, and he had returned to plunge 
once more into the political areua as a reconstructed Tory. He 
accepted the Hanoverian succession, but proposed by uniting the 
discontented Whigs, the scattered fragments of the old Tory party, 
and such Jacobites as would Join them, to organize a thorough- 
going party of opposition. In this he was ably supported by 
Carteret, Pulteney, Wyndham, and others. They were known as 
the Hanoverian or Constitutional Tories. Their principles, how- 
ever, are not so easy to describe; but upon one point they were 
thoroughly united. They were against the government; their 
object was to overthrow the Townshend ministry by making as 
much mischief as possible. In December 1726 they started the 
famous Craftsman., an opposition newspaper, whose columns for 
ten years continued each week to exploit the ideas of the new 
Toryism, fiercely attacking at every point the foreign and domestic 
policy of the government. In the opposition literature of the 
period is to be found Bolingbroke's famous pamphlet On the 
Idea of a Patriot King and Thomson's still more famous song 
Rule Britannia., destined to sing its way into the heart of the 
English nation. 

The war cloud which had been raised by the Treaty of Vienna, 
and which threatened at one time to devastate all Europe, soon 

blew over. Gibraltar was besieged for a time by the 

The wciv 

cloud dis- Spaniards, and an English fleet blockaded Porto Bello 
in South America. The emperor, however, became 
satisfied that his Osteud plan could never succeed in the face of 
the hostility of the sea powers; while the scheming of Spain in the 
Mediterranean roused his fears for his own Italian possessions so 
that he was far more inclined to fight Spain than assist her against 
England and France. He had a project, also, which was much 
nearer to his heart than even the Ostend East India Company, and 



1729-1732] THE FIKST BRITISH PRIME MINISTER 879 

that was the succession of his daughter Maria Theresa to the 

undivided Hapsburg possessions. In return, therefore, for a 

promise of supporting her succession, wliich had already been 

legalized within the empire by a Pragmatic Sanction, the emperor 

consented to yield the jDoint of dispute which had arisen between 

him and Elizabeth of Farnese over the succession of her son Don 

Carlos to the Duchies of Parma and Piacenza, and the 

Treaty of next year, 1731, the Second Treaty of Vienna, concluded 
Vienna 1731. , -j .' ' 

by the emperor with England, Holland, and Spain, 

laid the trouble which the First Treaty of Vienna had raised. By 

the Treaty of Seville of 1729 between England, France, and Spain, 

Spain had virtually yielded her claims to Gibraltar and Minorca, 

and confirmed the trading privileges which had been given to 

England by the Treaty of Utrecht. The Second Treaty of Vienna 

was largely the work of Walpole. Although at one time nearly 

every state of Europe, small or great, had been marshalled upon 

one side or the other, his patience, his farsighted determination 

to avoid war, had at last won ; and what had threatened to be one 

of the most bloody and destructive of European wars, passed otf 

mostly in a harmless exchange of protocols. 

The dismissal of Townshend left Walpole the unquestioned 

head of the ministry. William and Anne had been compelled to 

adopt the policy of securing a ministry in touch with 

Walpole, . ^ ... ■ • f, , , / . , , 

thefirst the prevailing spirit of the Commons, but m both cases 

the sovereign had remained the head of the ministry; 
the ministers, moreover, were often not congenial among themselves, 
and seldom united ujDon any one policy. But under the Han- 
overian princes it became net3essary to find a substitute for this 
royal head by exalting to the position of supreme authority 
within the cabinet, one minister who for the sake of harmony and 
unanimity should be allowed virtually to select his colleagues, and 
should be responsible for the conduct of their departments as well 
as his own. The principle of collective responsibility to parlia- 
ment was not yet understood or insisted upon, and for a long time 
to come parliament continued to deal with individuals rather than 
with the cabinet as a whole. And yet as the first to insist upon 
the principle of political unanimity and of active cooperation 



880 FIRST ERA OF WHIG RULE [georqe II. 

within the ministry, Walpole is justly called the first British Prime 
Minister. 

The practical wisdom of Walpole is shown in nothing so clearly 
as in his management of the much vexed question of toleration. 
The excitement which had attended the Whig attack on 
attan'^no ^^- Sachevcrell in 1710, the rioting, and finally the 
tfT^^'o overthrow of the Whig party, had taught him the danger 
of interfering with the traditions of the Established 
Church, and although he supported the repeal of the Occasional 
Conformity Act in 1719, he was not inclined to go further, but 
contented himself with securing the Annual Indemnity Act, by 
which the government virtually connived at violations of the law 
on the part of nonconforming office holders. Twice he refused to 
support a measure designed to repeal the Test Act, and in 1736 he 
withdrew a bill which proposed to relieve the Quakers of the dis- 
abilities under which they had so long and so unjustly suffered. 
In both cases his reasons were the same: he did not wish to 
awaken "the sleeping dogs" of ecclesiastical intolerance. Yet the 
spirit of toleration was steadily growing. In 1736 the death pen- 
alties for witchcraft were abolished. In 1733 the Protestant ref- 
ugees from Salzburg and Cambray were received with open arms, 
and the next year Oglethorpe was permitted to establish his philan- 
thropic colony in America, 

Walpole himself was too much of a worldling to show any 
active sympathy with the more direct phases of religious or reform- 
ing activity. He had no place for what he called the 
Further "ufflv enthusiasm" of the Wesleys. He was far more 

financial re- o ' -^ 

'Excise Bili'^ deeply interested in the bettering of the commercial life 
of England, and was steadily feeling his way to more 
scientific methods of securing national revenues. In 1733 he pro- 
posed to reduce the direct land tax from four shillings on the 
pound to one, and to make up the deficiency by an excise on salt. 
„, . The same year, also, he proposed to apply the excise 
Tdh^cco^^^ principle to wine and tobacco; that is, instead of col- 
proposed. lecting the duties at seaports when the goods entered 
the country, custo77is, he proposed to collect the duty when the 
goods were distributed within the country, the excise. The 



1734] THE EXCISE BILL 881 

great advantage of ■ the excise over the customs is that it 
reduces smuggling and -enables the government to save a large 
revenue which would be otherwise lost. It also favors legitimate 
commerce by protecting it from competition with illicit importa- 
tions. It was estimated at the time that of the £800,000 which 
was due the government on tobacco alone, scarcely one-fourth 
found its way to the government coffers. But unfortunately ever 
since the era of the Eump there had existed a latent prejudice 
against the excise. The opposition made the most of their oppor- 
tunity, and after a bitter struggle of three weeks, in which Wal- 
pole's majority sank from sixty to seventeen, forced him to with- 
draw the obnoxious though wise measure. 

In the defeat of the Excise Bill the opposition scored their first 
great triumph, and in the general election which followed in 1734 

they proceeded to make the most of it. The numer- 
m^ortance ^^^^ S^^^ ^^ parliament was slight, and yet they were 
mvosition beginning to see their way more clearly, and were able 

to go before the country as the advocates of somewhat 
more definite principles. The chief of these was that the king 
ought to be the king of the nation, and not the tool of a party, 
and that the business of the state ought to be in the hands of a 
group of the best men of all parties and not of one man. From 
Bolingbroke's pamphlet the opposition got the name of "Patriots;" 
not a bad name for a party, who were bent upon making capital 
by parading sentiment as against the cold-blooded commercial 
motives which had thus far guided Walpole in shaping public 
policy. The old Jacobites, also, were dropping out one by one, and 
with each death the dread of a Stuart restoration lost its hold upon 
the public mind. Men began to regard the new party with more 
favor, and to recognize the fact that an attack upon Whig min- 
isters did not necessarily mean an attack upon the Protestant suc- 
cession. This feeling was confirmed when upon the retirement of 
Bolingbroke, the public saw the Prince of Wales, Frederick Louis, 
putting himself at the head of the opposition and gathering to his 
camp all the discontented elements, including not only older men, like 
Chesterfield whom Walpole had dropped from his ministry becaase 
he had not agreed with him on the Excise Bill, grizzled fighters 



882 FIRST ERA OF WHIG RULE [georgbH. 

like Pulteney or Wyndham or "Downright" Shippen, the acknowl- 
edged leader of what was left of the old Tories, but the new gener- 
ation of younger politicians also, "the boys" as Walpole 
contemptuously called them, yet "boys" from whom he was soon 
to hear, for of them Avas William Pitt, "the terrible cornet of 
horse." 

In 1736 the ministry was further annoyed by disturbances 
in Scotland known as the "Porteous Riots," which grew out of 

the "Gin Act" of that year. In 1703, Paul Methuen, 
Act" and the ^^^® English minister at Lisbon, had succeeded in 
Riots"i736 persuading Portugal to join with England in a sort of 

reciprocity treaty, in which Portugal agreed to allow 
English woolens to be admitted to Portugal dutyfree, and Eng- 
land agreed to allow Portuguese wines to enter with a duty always 
one-third less than the French wines. As a result of this treaty 
the heavier port wine very soon supplanted the light French 
clarets as the drink of the English gentry, and had not a little to 
do with the hard drinking of the fashionable set of the eighteenth 
century. The laborer, however, who was not to be behind his 
betters, found solace in his gin, which could make him just "as 
drunk as a lord," and for far less money than the fashionable port. 
The general low state of morals, also, helped to increase the popular 
vice of the era. In the hope, therefore, of checking somewhat the 
use of high spirits, as well as to make an article of such common 
consumption a source of revenue, by the Gin Act the government 
sought to impose a heavy license upon the sale of gin. The people 
did not take to the new act kindly. In Edinburgh when an illicit 
seller named Wilson was executed, the crowd attacked the city 
guard with stones. Porteous the captain gave the order to fire. 
Several of the populace were killed. Porteous was tried for mur- 
der and condemned to death but reprieved. The mob then stormed 
the prison, and lynched the impetuous captain. Walpole with 
good judgment did not try to punish the rioters, but compelled 
Edinburgh to pay to the widow an indemnity of £2,000. 

In the meanwhile Walpole had ample opportunity abroad to 
carry out his peace policy, which virtually amounted to the old Tory 
policy of non-interference. In 1733 there broke out upon the con- 



1735-1739] WAK WITH SPAIN 883 

tineiit another one of those lamentable succession wars which 
wrought sLioh havoc in Europe during the first half of the eight- 
eenth century; this time the quarrel was over the Polish 
thcPoi.h^h'^^ succession. Walpole, in spite of the solicitations of 
1733-17^'^' Russia and Austria, stoutly held aloof; and while Aus- 
tria, Germany, and Russia were bending all their efforts 
to crush the Bourbons, Walpole could boast that among the fifty 
thousand slain not an Englishman was to be numbered. 

Ill 1735 the War of the Polish Succession came to a close and 

the Third Treaty of Vienna once more adjusted the rival claims of 

the European states. The close of the Polish war, 

E.'^trait'irmcnt i j., ttt i i /. 

of Ktu.iJdiHi however, left Walpole to face a dangerous issue of his 

and France. . 

own, in which England was to appear not as second 
but as principal. Since the death of the Regent of Orleans and 
the birth of an heir to Louis XV., France had drawn away from 
England and once more approached the other branch of the Bour- 
bon family. While the Polish War was in progress, the two Bour- 
bon governments had entered into a solemn compact, known 
sometimes as the "Treaty of the Escurial" and sometimes as the 
"Bourbon Family Compact," in which Spain agreed to assist France 
in case England took sides with Russia and Austria in the Polish 
War, and France pledged to join Spain in opposing the further 
commercial expansion of England. When the Third Treaty of 
Vienna freed the hands of the Bourbons, Spain prepared to carry 
out the terms of the Family Compact. She complained of the 
violations of the Treaty of Utrecht, by which the English were 
allowed, besides the privilege of the assiento, to send one ship a 
year with a general cargo to the Spanish-American ports. The 
English, however, had disregarded the limitation, and the govern- 
ment had allowed a profitable smuggling trade to develop in these 
waters. English merchants on their part complained of the 
tyranny of the Spanish customs patrol, and of the seizing and 
searching of English ships. A merchant captain, named 
Jenkins, carried about with him his ear, done up in cot- 
ton, as a trophy of Spanish brutality. Popular feeling ran high, 
and in 1739 Walpole was at last compelled very much against his 
will to declare war against Spain. 



884 PIRST ERA OF WHIG RULE [georgeII. 

The Spanish War, however, was soon forgotten in the prospect 

of a greater struggle, which was precipitated by the death of the 

emperor in October 1740, and the immediate outbreak 
The Austrian , , , » , ■ i -n • mi i • ^ 

Succession, of war between Austria and rrussia. ihe sluggish way 

in which Walpole had conducted the Spanish War, the 

barrenness of the war of events, the well known peace policy of 

the minister, and his virtual abandonment of Austria, the old ally 

of England in the Polish Succession War, were now used by the 

opposition with telling force. The general election of 1741, in 

which Thomson's Rule Brita7i7iia, with its refrain 

"Britons never, never, never shall be slaves," 

played au important part, went against the government to the extent 
that the Walpole majority was cut down to sixteen. When the 

new parliament met in December, a determined struggle 
Walpole, was begun against the now unpopular minister. He was 

still strong enough to prevent an impeachment; but the 
strength of the opposition proved to him that it was impossible 
longer to control the House, and in February 1742, he resigned. 
The king stood by him to the last, and upon his resignation raised 
him to the peerage as Earl of Oxford. His day of usefulness, how- 
ever, was gone. He had long suffered from ill health and sur- 
vived his fall only three years. He died in 1745. 

It is Walpole 's glory that he saw clearly that what England 
most needed was peace, and that for twenty years he persistently 

followed out this policy. To accomplish this he aban- 
Servicenf doued the old Whig ground, war with France and 

Walpole. o o ' 

active interference in European politics, and camped 
upon the old Tory ground, alliance with France and non-inter 
ference. "His fall," says Ranke, "was the fall of the political 
system based upon the union of Hanover and the Eegent of 
France." "His ministry," says Hassall, "forms a parenthesis in 
the oft-recurring struggle between England and France, which, 
beginning in 1688, continued till 1815." 



CHAPTER IV 

THE PELHAMS AND PITT. THE OCEAN" EMPIRE SECURED 

GEORGE 11. , 1742-1760 
GEORGE III., 1760-1763 

The fall of Walpole was the signal that the age of cynicism was 
at last drawing to its close. The "Patriots" had appealed to tlie 

quickening belief of the nation in goodness, and 
Significance .,, t , n ■, ^ ^ „, 

of fail of although to the older members of the ffroiip, the hard- 
Walpole. -,.... . , . , , . „ b r^ 

ened politicians, this ostentation oi patriotism was little 

more than a new trick of the game, the people were coming to 
believe in the disinterestedness of their leaders, and had loyally 
answered their appeal. 

Outside of parliament there were many evidences of this better 
life of the nation. About the time of the death of George I., a 

few earnest Oxford men had united in a club to discuss 
grrnw^'^'^^'^ religious questions. Their interest in religious matters 

soon took a very practical turn; they went out from 
their meetings to visit the sick and the poor, and the prisoners in 
the Oxford jail. The leader in this movement was John Wesley, 
son of Samuel Wesley, rector of Epworth, Lincolnshire. He was 
ably supported by his younger brother Charles, and by George 
Whitefield, the son of a Gloucester innkeeper. In 1735, the Wes- 
leys went out to Oglethorpe's new colony in America, to conse- 
crate their zeal to missionary work among the Indians. But the 
enterprise was not successful and they returned in 1738, to begin 
a greater work among the heathen at home. Here they were 
joined by their old friend Whitefield. Their fervor, their zeal, 
their plain and searching preaching moved in strange ways the 
simple folk who gathered by the thousands to hear them. The 
clergy of the day, accustomed to the sober and decorous, but life- 

885 



88G THE OCEAN" EMPIRE SECURED [george II. 

less methods of the generation past, could not understand these 
new voices crying in the wilderness, and refused to allow the 
preachers to use their churches. Then the Wesleys turned to the 
fields, the "byways and hedges," and began those tireless mis- 
sionary journeys over the land by which they stirred England as 
she had not been stirred since the early days of the Eeformation. 
Sometimes they were hooted and pelted by brutal mobs; often they 
were in danger of their lives; nevertheless they persevered, tireless 
in their efforts to awaken England to a better life. 

Wesley, however, was far more than a mere religious agitator. 

He saw with a statesman's insight, that what had been won, could 

be retained only by organization, and accordingly began 

Fmmdation ^q [^y the foundation of an organized society, the mem- 

Metiwdist \)qyq of which wcre soon known as "Methodists." The 

Church. 

organization grew rapidly; its usefulness expanded 
and deepened with every year. At the time of John Wesley's 
death, 1791, it numbered more than a hundred thousand adher- 
ents. Wesley himself did not wish t-o break with the mother 
church ; but it was no longer possible to keep the new wine in the 
old bottles, and soon after his death the Methodist body withdrew 
entirely from the established Church. 

Whitefield, unlike the Wesleys, was a Calvinist of the older Puri- 
tan school. He had, moreover, none of Wesley's forethought or 

genius as an organizer. As the Arminianism of the 
dllt movement ^^^^sleys became more pronounced, he drew off and 
'j^nhmd attached himself to the Countess of Huntingdon, a 

woman of deep piety and earnest devotion, who 
attempted to establish a Calvinistic wing of the Methodist move- 
ment. In England, however, Calvinistic Methodism never suc- 
ceeded in taking root. But in Wales, where a similar awakening 
had been in progress since the beginning of the century, Calvinistic 
Methodism spread rapidly, and in 1811 also separated from the 
Established Church. In Scotland and Ireland, where religious con- 
ditions differed widely from those in England, Methodism received 
little encouragement, but in the new world it readily found a 
home; and here foundations were laid, deep and broad, upon 
which the modern American church has since grown up. 



1742] METHODISM 887 

Great as were the direct influences of the Methodist movement, 
its influence outside the ranks of Methodism proper was even 

greater. The English clergy felt the general toning up 
Methodim ^^ the religions atmosphere ; the gambling, fox hunting, 

absentee clergyman of the age of Sterne gave way to 
men like Toplady, the author of Eock of Ages, or John Newton, 
the "converted slave dealer.'* The open profligacy that 
had disgraced the upper classes began to hide its face; literature 
ceased to be foul, and with a new inspiration became itself an 
instrument of further progress. The new life breathed a spirit of 
unwonted philanthropy into English society, invading the prisons, 
and recognizing the rights of the victims of Justice. It invaded 
the penal codes as well and infused here a clemency before 
unknown to English law. Even the black man was not forgotten, 
and the movement set on foot which was ultimately to result in 
the abolition of slavery throughout the British dominions. The 
state, also, found itself confronted with a new duty in the educa- 
tion of the masses and the protection of the victims of commercial 
greed. 

The fall of Walpole made little change in the personnel of the 
ministry. The great peace minister had long since ceased to lead, 

and so slightly had the modern idea of cabinet govern- 
The new o j o 

ministry, ment taken hold of tbe political mind, that when he 

left the ministry, of those who held high office under 
him, only Harrington the Secretary of State, saw fit to resign with 
his chief. Of the two offices which Walpole had held, Spencer 
Compton, now Lord Wilmington, a nonentity who owed his pre- 
ferment solely to royal favoritism, was made Lord Treasurer, and 
Sandys was made Chancellor of the Exchequer. The place vacated 
by Harrington was given to Carteret, who was the master mind of 
the group. He was a man of mettle, with a taste for grand coali- 
tions, who believed that he was called upon to "make kings and 
emperors and maintain the balance of power in Europe." He 
was, however, unfortunately given to drink and when in his cups 
he was without reason or discretion. At a time when all Europe 
was rushing to arms, a more unsafe man could not have been 
chosen to direct the foreign affairs of England. 



888 THE OCEAN EMPIRE SECURED [George IL 

It is not necessary to enter into the "tangled web of armed 
law suits" known as the War of the Austrian Succession; in order 

to understand the position of England and the results 
fh^lvm-of'^ attained, it is sufficient to state the general motives of 
the Amman Hjq -^^y. When the emperor Charles VI. succeeded to 

the Hapsburg possessions, he made a will by which 
all his hereditary dominions should pass to his son and after him 
to his eldest daughter. Charles had not only persuaded the Ger- 
man Diet to accept this will as a law of the empire, but in the 
several treaties which he made with foreign powers during his 
reign, he secured also the consent of Spain, Eussia, Prussia, Great 
Britain, and France. When he died, therefore, in October 1740, 
since his only son had preceded him by some years, the Hapsburg 
dominions were to pass by the law of the empire and the guar- 
antee of Europe, "whole and undivided, to his daughter Maria 
Theresa." It also seemed probable that she would secure the 
imperial crown for her husband Francis of Lorraine. The tempta- 
tion, however, offered by a possible dismemberment of Austria, 
was too strong for the princes who could advance any claims to 
Hapsburg territories, and within tvfo months of the death of 
Charles, an appeal was made to arms. Frederick II. , the young 
King of Prussia, set the ball rolling by invading Silesia in Decem- 
ber 1740 and in a few months all Europe was in commotion. 
Even those princes who had no claims in the case, were compelled 
to embrace one side or the other, as they saw themselves threatened 
by the advantages promised to old hereditary rivals. George 11. 
belonged to this latter class. As Elector of Hanover, he had no 
wish to see Prussia, his old rival in north Germany, exalted at 
the expense of Austria, and was eager to champion the cause of 
the Austrian queen. 

In the meanwhile Charles Albert, Elector of Bavaria, who 
claimed the whole of the Hapsburg dominions, had succeeded in 

drawing most of the German states into a league with 
mvoivedin France, for the maintenance of his claim, and in 1741 

began war on his own account. Frederick had also 
drawn near to France, though he much preferred to head a league 
of the German princes himself. Maria Theresa, on the other hand, 



1742] WAR OF AUSTRIAif SUCCESSION 889 

found a ready ally in Russia; for the Russian sovereign was no 
better pleased than the Elector of Hanover to see Prussia increas- 
ing its strength. To prevent Russia from attacking bim in the 
rear, Frederick had by French influence succeeded in getting 
Sweden to attack Russia. In May Spain also joined the Bavarian 
league and agreed to attack the Austrian possessions in Italy. 
Finally in January 1742, the Elector of Bavaria obtained the 
imperial crown as Charles VII. Thus the attack of Frederick 
upon Silesia had within eighteen months arrayed all Europe in two 
hostile camps. 

The pot was thus well boiling, when in February 1742 Walpole 

retired to the peerage, and Carteret, with exalted ideas of his own 

ability and of his personal importance in working: out the 

Carteret j ± l o 

involves destiuv of England, assumed direction of the foreien 

policy of England, and although England still had the 
war with Spain on her hands, plunged into the melee. The influ- 
ence of this new accession of strength to the Austrian cause was at 
once felt. In August the English Admiral Mathews destroyed a 
Spanish fleet in the harbor of Saint Tropez, effectually preventing 
Spain from interfering with Austria in northern Italy. The 
indomitable queen, who had pacified Frederick by the cession of 
Silesia, with renewed energy turned upon the French and Bava- 
rians, who had recently entered Bohemia, and by the end of the 
year had expelled them and regained control of the country. , 

The next year opened with even more signal successes for the 

Austrian and her allies. In 1742 she had stood at bay behind her 

boundaries. She now assumed the offensive, entering 

The opera- Bavaria and driving Charles from his own Electorate, 

tions of 1743. ^ ' 

while an army of English, Hessians, and Hanoverians 
beat the French at Dettingen^ on the Main. As a result of these 
successes Germany was cleared and an Austro-English army held 
the line of the Rhine. 



^ George II. commanded the allies; the last instance where an English 
king has commanded an army in person. The battle, however, was an 
absurd affair. The victory was due to the endurance of the English, 
rather than to the generalship of the king. 



890 THE OCEAN EMPIRE SECURED [georgeII. 

Thus far Carteret's program had been carried out with results 

that Marlborough might have envied. But unfortunately, just 

at the moment when an honorable peace lay within his 

The ji.ustvo- 

Sardinian grasp, he was seized with an inspiration, for the bril- 
septemher liance of which more can be said than for its sanity. 
George II. had favored the war because he feared 
Prussia; but Carteret had feared the new ascendency which the 
war promised to the older enemy of England. He was not satis- 
fied, therefore, with simply vindicating the integrity of the Haps- 
burg inheritance; he proposed to complete the humiliation of 
France by forming against her a counter league of England, 
Austria, and Prussia. This was not an easy matter; the wound 
which Frederick had dealt to Austrian pride was too grievous to be 
easily healed or forgotten. Yet the overconfident Carteret believed 
that he knew how to salve the injured pride of his southern ally, 
and proposed that Austria and Sardinia enter into a league, by 
which the Austrians were to seize Naples and hand it over to the 
Elector of Bavaria. He, in turn, was to cede Bavaria to Maria 
Theresa. Thus the Austrian queen was to be reconciled to the loss 
of Silesia, by being allowed to extend her power in south Germany. 
Carteret, however, had not calculated upon the possible prefer- 
ences of the third member of the proposed alliance against France, 
who had his own notions about the future arrangement 
to Carteret's of the map of Europe, and saw in the proposed exten- 
sion of Austrian influence in Germany as well as in the 
exaltation of Hanover, a menace to the future of Prussia. The 
English minister had failed, also, to calculate upon the preferences 
of the other German princes, who had no wish to encourage their 
powerful neighbors in the idea that Germany was a cheese, to be 
carved and devoured at will. Carteret, moreover, had forgotten 
Spain altogether, who had no idea of renouncing her claim upon 
Naples, for the purpose of healing the breach between Maria 
Theresa and Frederick. 

Carteret's scheme, therefore, instead of humbling France, sim- 
ply sent all Europe into a turmoil again, and postponed peace 
indefinitely. Spain drew nearer to France, renewing the Family 
Compact, and agreeing to make common cause with her against 



1744, 1745] THE PELHAM MINISTRY 891 

her enemies. When the Austrian army set out for Italy in the 

spring, Frederick at once invaded Bohemia, beginning the second 

Silesian war, and in May with other German princes 

The seco'tid 

Silesian formally ioined the Franco - Spanish league. At 

war, 1744. \ •> . I. ■ . n . . 

home, also, a serious reaction set in against Carteret. 
Public confidence in his judgment and ability as a leader was shat- 
tered. The minister, moreover, was personally disliked for his 
imperious ways, and what little influence he had left, rapidly 
waned before the onset of the Pelhams,^ who seized the moment to 
get rid of their unpopular colleague. 

Carteret had clung to the old policy, so dear to George II., of 
favoring Hanover, but the Pelhams, under the pretext of favor- 
ing England instead of Hanover, had proposed to revert 
TnePeiham again to the policy of William and Anne and make the 

ministry. o r j 

Netherlands the base of English operations on the con- 
tinent. Upon this issue the quarrel finally reached a crisis. 
Carteret, now Lord Granville, resigned, and Harrington, the 
former colleague of Walpole, returned to his old post of 
Secretary of State. In January 1745, by the Treaty of Warsaw 
the Netherlands were formally admitted to a league with England, 
Austria, and Saxony-Poland. In one other respect, also, Pelham, 
who was the recognized head of the new ministry, showed his dis- 
position to return to the old ideas of William's reign. Instead 
of making his administration a strictly party ministry he sought 
to strengthen it by taking men not only from the opposition 
Whigs, as Chesterfield and Pitt, but from the Tory ranks as well. 
Although the new ministers had come into power as a protest 
against Carteret's war policy, they were forced for a time to 

shoulder the burden of the war, nor were they 

ministry more succcssful. The western Netherlands, which 
and the war. » tt, i , i t • i a i • 

the Treaty ot Utrecht had given to Austria, as 

usual presented a tempting point of attack to France. 

Maria Theresa was so busily occupied with Frederick, that 

she was compelled to entrust the defense of these territories 

1 Wilmington had died in 1743 and Henry Pelham had succeeded to 
the post of First Lord of the Treasury. 



892 THE OCEAN EMPIIIE SECURED [gboege ii. 

to lier allies, and thus threw the burden of saving the Austrian 
Netherlands almost wholly upon England. The Dutch were in 
no condition for war; the barrier fortresses, which had been 
entrusted to their keeping, had fallen into decay, and their armies 
were far from a war footing. Of the eight fortresses 
barrier four fell in fivc wccks, and while Louis XV. marched 

June and soutli to savc Elsass from an attack of Charles of Lor- 

Jlilv 1744. 

mine, Marshal Saxe began the siege of Tournay. The 
allies aroused themselves, and in May 1745, George II. 's son Wil- 
liam Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, advanced with an army of 
English, Dutch, and Hanoverians, to relieve the city. They were 
met by Saxe at Fontenoy on the 11th and suffered a serious 
repulse. Tournay, Ghent, Ostend, and other Netherland towns fell 
to the French as the spoil of victory. The cause of the allies had 
fared no better in the fighting in Germany. In 1744 Charles of 
Lorraine had been driven out of Elsass and. gradually forced back 
across Bavaria. In October Seckendorf had entered the Bavarian 
capital and restored Charles VII. to his ancestral estates. In 
June of the next year Charles of Lorraine fell into the hands of 
Frederick at Ilohenfriedburg and was driven out of Silesia; on 
September 30 he was again beaten at Soor in Bohemia, leaving 
Frederick to punish Saxony for its temerity in joining his enemies. 
In the meanwhile a new, and, at the time, apparently a 
more serious danger threatened England at home and compelled 
„ her for the moment to leave the Dutch and Hanoverians 

New 

jacnhitc ^^) i^q1(J Qg the French as best they could by them- 
1744-1746. selves. In February 1744, Charles Edward, the son of 
the Stuart Pretender, "James III.," had set sail for England, con- 
voyed by a French fleet under command of the famous Marshal 
Saxe; but the expedition first fell foul of the English Admiral 
Norris and then was still further misused by storms, so that 
Prince Charles had to return to France for a fresh start. The 
French at the time were turning all their energies to the Austrian 
Netherlands, and it was not easy to induce Louis to devote any 
more money to an experiment that had so often failed. But 
Charles Edward was not to be discouraged, and taking advantage of 
the victory of Fonteuoy, accompanied by seven companions, he 



1745] THE PEETENDER 893 

managed to get off in a single ship, and after spending six weeks 

in the Hebrides landed on the wild coast of western Scotland. 

For three weeks the cause of the little band of adventu- 

July 25, 1745. 

rers looked black enough; yet when the royal standard 
was finally raised in Glenfinnan the Stuart could count fifteen hun- 
dred clansmen in his following. Slipping by Cope, who was approach- 
ing with three thousand regulars, on September 3 
he entered Perth, and on the 17th at the Town Cross in 
Edinburgh proclaimed "James VIII." Four days later he routed 
Cope at Preston Pans. His army now numbered six thousand 
men, but the Lowlanders held aloof and the Highlanders hesitated 
to march further south. But the tact and patience of Charles at 
last won the clansmen, and after two months' waiting he deter- 
mined to make a dash into England. By marching down .the west 
side of the island, he avoided an army of ten thousand men who 
held the Tyne at Newcastle, and reached Derby on December 4. 
It was already evident, however, to no one more than to the 
daring leader himself, that the venture was hopeless. He had 
expected to be joined by the Jacobites of England but 
Disappoint- although he had marched through the old Jacobite 

mei It of the ~ ~ 

imder^'^ counties hardly a man had stirred. The people came 
out "to see the pretty soldiers pass;" but hardly two 
hundred men joined the Prince from the time that he left Scot- 
land. Manchester had lighted its windows in his honor as he 
passed through, and had sped him on hi& way with a gift of two 
thousand pounds, but the husbands and fathers were too busy with 
other things, to turn aside to peril their lives in a struggle in 
which their interest had long since ceased to be other than a mere 
matter of traditional sentiment. The policy of Walpole had done 
its work. Peace, prosperity, and security had given Englishmen 
something better to fight for than the time-worn claims of a for- 
gotten dynasty. 

The Prince was now in the heart of England with only his five 
thousand Highlanders to depend upon, while from all sides powerful 
armies were rushing to close in upon him. There was only one 
thing for him to do. On December (J, he raised his camp and 
began the return march, eluding his foes and reaching Glasgow 



894 THE OCEAN EMPIRE SECURED [geokge 11. 

twenty days later. Here new reinforcements from the Highlands 
raised his army to nine thousand men, and on January 17 at Fal- 
kirk he turned and attacked General Hawley, who had 
tiie Jacobite followed him from England. Again the rush of the 
Highlanders bore all before them; but their bravery 
was useless. Other English armies were advancing from the 
south. The Highlanders themselves had lost heart, and when on 
April 16, the Prince faced Cumberland near Culloden, he could 
marshal only five thousand men. Three times the Highlanders 
charged; but their wild rush had no terrors for the seasoned 
troops, veterans of the continental . wars, who now confronted 
them. Charles fled from the battlefield, leaving his clansmen to 
be hunted down by the soldiers of Cumberland, who did their 
bloody work so thoroughly that their leader was known ever after- 
ward as the "Butcher." After a series of adventures Charles 
finally reached France in the autumn. He died at Rome in 1788. 
He left a brother, Cardinal Henry of York, who survived him 
nearly twenty years. With the death of the latter in 1807 the 
direct line of the "legitimate Stuarts" ended. 

Jacobitism was now dead and buried. The government, how- 
ever, in its fright determined to strike vigorously; some eighty 
of the followers of Charles were brought to the gallows; three 
hundred and fifty were transported; three Scottish lords were 
beheaded and some forty other persons of rank attainted. The 
Highland chiefs were compelled to surrender their hereditary 
jurisdictions to the crown in return for a money payment. The 
people were forbidden to wear the tartan. Feudal Scotland passed 
away and "the sheriff's writ soon ran through the Highlands with 
as little resistance as in the streets of London." 

The defeat of the English in the Netherlands and the appear- 
ance of the Pretender had only strengthened the purpose of the 
Pelhams to end the war, and on December 25, 1745, in 
England the "Convention of Hanover," England made her peace 

withdraws ' ° ^ 

fromccmti- -^jth Prussia and left Maria Theresa to fight out her 
nental wars. ° 

quarrel by herself, more than ever determined to win 

back Silesia, now that the plan of giving her Bavaria had failed. 

In the Netherlands, however, the struggle with France still lin- 



1750] THE CALENDAR BILL 895 

gered on until 1748, when the "Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle," 
(Aachen) restored the old status quo, — England giving up her con- 
quests by sea and France her conquests by land. The quarrel of 
England and Spain was also included in the Aachen settlement, 
but the two governments continued to bicker over the question of 
indemnity until 1750, when the "Treaty of Madrid" finally settled 
their long-time trade quarrel. 

After the Treaty of Aachen the Pelham ministry moved on 

qnietly enough until the death of Henry Pelham in 

TJiePciham 1754. .The public debt had reached the unprecedented 

minl'itry and , -r. 1 1 

iiome ajfairs. stiHi of £78,000,000 ; bnt in 1750 Pelham succeeded m 

reducing the interest from four and five to three per 

cent, thus greatly diminishing the annual burden. By reason of 

this saving the government was able to devote some funds to the 

encouragement of learning: a measure which resulted 

Beginning of ... . , 

theBrititih m the acquisition ol the collections which have formed 
the nucleus of the British Museum. Pelham, also, 
sympathized with Walpole's policy of religious toleration. In 1751 
an effort was made to secure a bill for the naturalization of the 
Protestant French refugees who, upon the renewal of persecution 
by the French authorities in 1750, had begun again to flock to Eng- 
land. In 1753 a bill was passed by which resident Jews were to 
be naturalized. In the next session, however, owing to a revival 
of popular prejudices, encouraged by the jealousy of British mer- 
chants, it was repealed. In 1751 Chesterfield intro- 
darBiii!"mi.^^^^^^ his "Calendar Bill," by which the Neto Style, as 
the Gregorian calendar was called in England, was made 
legal. By this bill the English year was to begin henceforth on 
January 1 instead of March 25, and the eleven days between 
September 3 and September 13 inclusive were cut out of the 
Calendar. The measure aroused a good deal of feeling at the 
time. Pelham opposed the new Calendar as a "newfangled" 
idea, although Gregory XIII. had devised it in 1582, and the 
Catholic countries of Europe had virtually been using it ever since. 
The opposition politicians, in the general stagnation of politics, 
seized upon it as an "issue" in the general election of 1754, and 
tried to rouse the country with the cry, "Give us back our eleven 



806 THE OCEAN EMPIRE SECURED [gkoegeII. 

days." Another important measure of the era was the "Marringe 
Act" of 1753, by which only such marriages were recognized as 
legal as were performed by a regular clergyman of the Anglican 
Church after the banns had been published for three successive 
Sundays in the parishes of the bride and bridegroom. A penalty 
of seven years' transportation imposed on the celebrant put an 
end to the romantic marriages so long associated with the name 
of the Fleet. 

In 1751 the death of Frederick Prince of Wales greatly weak- 
ened the Whig opposition, and the i^ing felt liimself strong enough 

to compel the Pelhams to allow Earl Granville to 
Qranviiie return as President of the Council, while Bedford, 

the Southern Secretary, gave way to Holdernesse. On 
March 6, 1754, Henry Pelham closed his long and useful career. 
He had been a timid man, without any of Carteret's brilliant dash. 
But his timidity had served him a good turn; for it led him 
to surround himself with a corps of able men, who imparted an 
unwonted solidity and strengtli to his ministry as a whole, at the 
same time that the reaction from Carteret's methods enabled him 
to restore the saner and surer peace policy of Walj)ole. 

Thomas Pelham, the duke of Newcastle, succeeded to Henry 
Pelham's place as First Lord of the Treasury. After a brief trial 

of Sir Thomas Robinson as Secretary of State, the 

The New- . . . '' 

castle mill- position was givcii to Henry Fox. Pitt who had 
opposed Iiobinson lost his position in the ministry. The 
new ministry, however, was already sailing in troubled waters. 
France and England, so effectually kept apart at home by the 
Channel, "the accursed ditch" as Maria Theresa had called it, 
were already beginning to crowd each other along their outposts 
in the new world and in India. 

England's American colonies had been growing rapidly during 
the century and their population already mounted up to nearly 
Condition of one-fourth of that of the mother country. Their wealth 
u^tfienew^ ^^^ increasing even faster than their population. In 
world. ^}jQ northern colonies this wealth was still pretty 

evenly distributed. The democracy of wealth was also attended 
by a democracy in education; illiteracy was virtually unknown. 



1752] EKGLAKD AND FRANCE IN NEW WORLD 897 

In religions beliefs the colonists varied widely, bnt their differences 
took on nothing of the political pugnacity of the old world. The 
mother country had for the most part left them to themselves, 
content to monopolize their trade with the old world. The colo- 
nists were satisfied; the right of monopoly was the commonly 
accepted doctrine of Europe, and restriction in trade was fnlly 
compensated by the protection which the colonists enjoyed as 
British subjects. They led a free and independent life, proud of 
their institutions and proud of their birthright as Englishmen. 

From the first the relation of the English colonists to their 

French neighbors had been one of suspicion. Each new outbreak 

in Europe had had its echoes in the western wilderness, 

England and vvhere the three great wars which had followed the 
France m o 

worid^ Eevolution were known respectively as "William and 

Mary's War," "Queen Anne's War," and "King 
George's War." Heretofore, however, these colonial wars had 
been largely sympathetic and had no real occasion in conditions 
existing in the new world. But soon after the Treaty of Aachen 
the French began to show alarming signs of making good their 
claims to the great Mississippi basin by assuming an aggressive 
attitude towards the few English colonists who had had the hardi- 
hood to penetrate the Alleghanies and settle about the upper 
streams of the Ohio and the Kentucky. The French had already 
built two lines of forts and block houses; the one extending from 
the present site of Chicago along the Illinois to the Mississippi, 
and the other from the present site of Detroit along the line of the 
Wabash to the Ohio. They now began a third line from the 
eastern end of Lake Erie to the point where the two great rivers 
of western Pennsylvania unite to form the Ohio. Here in 1752, 
Duquesne, the new governor of Canada, built the fort which bore 
his name. The English ministry were not blind to the signifi- 
cance of these encroachments and encouraged the colonial govern- 
ors to assert their claims to the disputed territories. The more 
remote colonial governments, however, were by no means inclined 
to enter into an expensive war for objects in which they regarded 
themselves as hardly concerned. Even Pennsylvania was inclined 
to content itself with the region east of the mountains rather than 



898 THE OCEAK EMPIEE SECURED [george II. 

violate the religious principles of its Quaker population by going 
to war. A feeble attempt of Virginia to reduce Fort Duquesne in 
1754 still further satisfied the home government that its active 
assistance was needed, and in 1755 it determined in concert with 
the colonies to take active means to break down the new fence 
which Duquesne had drawn across their western frontier. The 
British officers, however, unacquainted with frontier fighting, were 
no match for the French and their Indian allies. On July 9, 
1755, the British General Braddock, while marching to attack 
Fort Duquesne, was taken in ambuscade and lost more than one 
half of his little army of fifteen hundred men. The erection of 
Fort William Henry on Lake George to confront the French fort 
at Ticonderoga, and the deportation of the French settlers of 
Acadia which had fallen to the English as a result of the War of 
the Spanish Succession, could not atone for Braddock's defeat. 
The government could not shut its eyes to the seriousness of the 
situation. England was again confronted by a war with France. 
Since the accession of the Georges, in every struggle of Eng- 
land on the continent the vulnerable point of England lay, not in 
America or India, but in Hanover, and although in the 

The Convcn- 

lion of West- act wliicli had made George I. king, English statesmen 

minster o ? o 

January, had attempted to disclaim any responsibility for the 
continental possessions of his house, the enemies of 
England were not inclined to respect the disclaimer, or distinguish 
between the possessions of the King of England and the possessions 
of the Elector of Hanover. Carteret had boldly accepted these 
conditions and made a league between England and Hanover the 
pivot of his foreign policy ; a measure which pleased no one more 
than George II. himself. But the nation had repudiated Carteret 
and his policy, and the Pelhams had returned to the older policy 
of depending upon Holland rather than Hanover as a base of oper- 
ation against France. The Dutch, however, had proved but a 
broken reed, and in 1755, the Newcastle ministry was as hard put 
to it as ever for an efficient ally on the continent. In a war with 
France, Austria, the long time enemy of the Bourbons and ally of 
England, might be depended on; but if Austria entered the lists, 
Prussia would be sure to arm gpiust Austria, and the necessity 



1756] THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR 899 

of protecting Hanover would again confront the English. If, 
however, Prussia could be persuaded to unite with England against 
France, the old time feud of France and Austria might prevent 
Austria from joining with France. But George, as Elector of Han- 
over, had no wish to see Prussia, his rival in north Germany, 
strengthened by a league with England, and proposed instead to 
subsidize Russia to defend Hanover. Here a new difficulty con- 
fronted the ministry, for Frederick declared that he would never 
suffer Russian troops to enter German territory, and even Newcastle 
refused to support the king in a measure which was sure to add 
-the now powerful military state of Prussia to the enemies of Eng- 
land. The proposal to subsidize Russia, therefore, was finally 
abandoned, and George was compelled to enter into the "Conven- 
tion of Westminster," by which both Hanover and Prussia were to 
remain neutral in case of a war with France. 

The English ministers, however, were not left long to congrat- 
ulate themselves on the success of their diplomacy. They had not 
taken into account the bitterness of Maria Theresa's 

The counter „,. . 

alliance of leelings towards _b rederick. No sooner had she heard 

France!and of the Convention of Westminster than she at once 
Russia, 1756. T , 1 T , T^ • rt, -1 

dispatched messengers to Pans to offer her support to 

her old foe. She was already certain of the support of Russia, 
whose wayward Czarina Elizabeth had suffered from the caustic 
wit of her brilliant neighbor and made no secret of her desire to 
overwhelm Prussia, and in fact for ten years had been in secret 
league with Austria against Frederick. When, therefore, on April 
23 the Russian minister formally proposed to Austria to unite 
the arms of the two powers for the dismemberment of Prussia, 
the Russian government was simply pursuing a policy long since 
consciously adopted. Thus if the English ministers had assured 
themselves of the safety of Hanover, they had little but mischief 
to expect from the secret messages . which were passing between 
Vienna and the capitals of France and Russia. 

Thus began the "Seven Years' War." The outlook for Eng- 
land was gloomy enough. Braddock's defeat was still fresh in 
the popular mind. Boscawen had attempted to prevent the French 
from sending reinforcements to Canada and had failed. In India 



900 THE OCEAN" EMPIRE SECURED [georgeII. 

there had just closed a long and bloody struggle between the agents 
of the English company and the agents of the French com- 
pany, in which the English had held their own with 

The Seven great difficulty and had been saved only by the daring 
Years' War ~ ^ .1 j o 

begun. of the young ensign Robert Clive. The ministry in 

their efforts to save Hanover had won Prussia, but they 
had lost Austria and made an enemy of Eussia, who had no cause 
of quarrel with England whatever save her new friendship for 
Frederick. Moreover, while the ministry were thus botching the 
whole matter of a foreign alliance, little was done to prepare for 
the immediate strain of the war ; not only were incompetent men left 
in command of the fleets, but when 1756 opened, the government 
did not have three regiments in England that were fit for service. 
France, on the other hand, with a vigor and energy that reminds 
one of the great days of Louis XIV., was not only fully prepared, 
but was moving promptly and swiftly to take full advantage of the 
dilatory English ministry. In April 1756 the duke of Eichelieu 
began the siege of Port Mahon in Minorca, the "key of the Medi- 
terranean," at that time regarded of more importance than 
Gibraltar. Admiral John Byng, the son of the Admiral Byng 
who had won such honors for the English flag in 1718, was sent 
to relieve the garrison, but retired to Gibraltar, and allowed the 
whole island to pass into French hands. Evil news also came from 
America where in August Montcalm had captured Fort Oswego on 
Lake Ontario. But, if this were depressing, from India came 
news that roused Englishmen to madness. Surajah 
Surajah Dowlah had become Nawab of Bengal early in 1756. 

L>owlah;th6 ^^ „ 1 , n ,, , n , 

"Black Hole He was a sworn enemy 01 the batmen as he called 

of Calcutta," ,, ^ 

1756. the Europeans, and roused by the long struggle between 

the English and French which had just closed in June, 
he laid siege to Calcutta and forced it to surrender in four days. 
Happily the women had been taken on board the ships in the river 
and had already sailed away with the governor. But the little 
garrison of 146 men were shut up for safe keeping in the old gar- 
rison prison, a strong room twenty feet square and ventilated only 
by two small iron barred windows. Here without air or water, the 
prisoners were left through the stifling hours of an Indian midsum- 



1757] THE NEWCASTLE-PITT MINISTRY 901 

mer night. In the morning only twenty-three of the one hundred 
and forty-six men were alive. "When the story reached England of 
that night of horror in the "Black Hole of Calcutta," where strong 
men in the agony of suffocation wrestled • in the darkness and 
trampled upon each other in a mad struggle to get near the two 
holes that served for windows, the people in their wrath turned 
upon the duke of Newcastle, whose incompetence they made 
responsible for the long series of blunders and misfortunes. 

In November Newcastle resigned, and the enthusiastic support 
of the great commercial class practically forced upon the king 

William Pitt, the one man whom the nation had come 
zationlnue to look upon as able to save England from going the 
Pittr^nlttry. Way of her possessions in the Mediterranean. The 

Whig oligarchy, however, who had so long ruled Eng- 
land, were suspicious of the brilliant minister, who, although he 
had been in parliament since 1735, was still a poor man. His 
integrity was a constant rebuke to his corrupt colleagues, nor 
did he try to conceal his contempt for them and their methods. 
The king, also, did not take to the haughty minister, nor could 
he forget his violent opposition to the Kussian subsidy treaties. 
The nation was for Pitt ; but it was still the day of seven-year 
parliaments, and the principle of giving the people an opportunity 
to express their opinion at a crisis by a new election had not yet 
been adopted. Newcastle, moreover, the late minister, who under- 
stood and practiced the old Danby methods of "influence," was the 
expert master of the House, and used his power so effectually that 
in April 1757 the king ventured to dismiss Pitt and recall New- 
castle. Then followed a bitter struggle of three months which ended 
at last in a compromise, in which Newcastle remained Lord of the 
Treasury, but Pitt and Holdernesse became the Secretaries of State, 
As thus organized, the new ministry was one of great strength. 
Pitt, with a foresight and enthusiasm all but inspired, fully grasped 

the opportunity which opened before England in the 
the new direction of colonial expansion and conquest. When 

the coolest statesmen were gloomily discussing the loss 
of the colonies altogether and the collapse of England's prestige 
among the powers of Europe, Pitt saw England rising from the 



902 THE OCEAN' EMPIRE SECUEED [georgkII. 

struggle, her glory unditnmed, her prestige unmatched, and 
her colonial empire without a rival. He saw too, what had been 
hidden from the petty politicians of his day who had for a genera- 
tion been knocking their heads together in the murky atmosphere 
of parliamentary quarrels, that the salvation of Britain lay in 
adopting a more generous attitude toward the greater Britain 
beyond the seas, in treating British communities everywhere as 
members of the governing firm and not as subject peoples to be 
ruled as servants or to be exploited for the enrichment of a few 
monopolists at home. So broad were his sympathies that he 
could find place in this larger family even for Hanover; he 
declared that Hanover was as dear to him as Hampshire, that he 
knew no local attachment, and that it was a matter of indifference 
to him where a Briton was cradled. Nor did his lofty faith in the 
destiny of his country, or the fervor of his enthusiasm outrun his 
ability to inspire others or command the elements of success. He 
possessed a marvelous skill in selecting his agents. His courage 
was infectious, and no man left his presence without something of 
his confidence. Newcastle was bad company, and it seems strange 
at first thought that a man of Pitt's undoubted integrity should 
ever consent to accept such a running mate. But Pitt's weakness 
lay in dealing with the House. Though called the "Great Com- 
moner," no acknowledged leader ever had less personal influence 
than he among the politicians of his day ; and yet to succeed as a 
minister, he must have the steady support of the Commons. He 
left Newcastle, therefore, to manage the House, while he, to use 
his own expression, "borrowed Newcastle's majority" to save the 
British Empire. 

The alliance of Prussia had as yet not been of any service to 
England. It had not even saved Hanover. In August 1756 

Frederick had struck at the nearest of his possible 
Theimron enemies, the elector of Saxony, taking Dresden and 
nent,i756. compelling the Surrender of the Saxon army at Pirna. 

The act was legally a serious violation of the laws of 
the empire; for Saxony had not yet openly joined the enemies of 
Frederick. But Frederick had received conclusive evidence that 
the moment the elector dared he would join the foes of Prussia. 



1757] THE PARTITION TREATIES 903 

Frederick's enemies raised a great cry in order to make the most 
of what they were pleased to style the wanton aggression of the 
Prussian king, and in 1757 succeeded in putting him under the 
ban of the Empire.^ 

Frederick's showy victories, therefore, had only raised up new 
enemies and hastened the scheming of the old. In February Rus- 
sia and Austria at last agreed upon the terms of a Par- 

The Parti- 

tion Treaties, tition Treaty, and in May Austria and France signed a 
similar treaty at Versailles. Saxony-Poland, Sweden, 
and the elector of the Palatine, as well as Austria, France, and 
Russia, were to be the beneficiaries. Frederick had not been 
ignorant of the purport of the diplomatic haggling which had been 
going on at Paris and Vienna, and if he had struck without waiting 
for his enemies to com2)lete their plans, it was to secure the first 
advantage in the unequal conflict which he knew was at hand and 
was inevitable. He was not deterred, therefore, by the outcry which 
his attack on Saxony had raised, and followed it up in the spring 
by the invasion of Bohemia. On May 6 he won a hard fought 
battle before Prague, but in June he was defeated by Daun at 
Kolin and compelled to withdraw. His enemies followed him into 
his own territories. Daun and Charles of Lorraine swept into 
Silesia, while a Russian army of 100,000 men poured into eastern 
Prussia, taking Memel and defeating Frederick's Marshal Lehwald 
at Gross-Jiigersdorf on August 30. The Swedes, also, who had 
Joined in the war, were pouring into Pomerania. The French in 
the meanwhile had advanced from the west, seizing the possessions 
of the Prussian monarch on the lower Rhine, entering western 
Hanover, defeating the duke of Cumberland at Hastenbeck July 
26, and finally driving him back to the Elbe, where they compelled 
him in the "Convention of Closter-Seven" to agree to disband his 
army altogether. 

While Frederick's enemies were thus pressing upon him from 
all points of the compass and the erasure of Prussia from the map 
of Europe seemed at hand, his allies were repeating the series 

' The Emperor Charles VII. had died, in Jan. 1745 and Maria Theresa's 
husband, Francis, had been elected to succeed him, (Sept. 13) in spite of 
the opposition of Frederick. 



904 THE OCEAN EMPIRE SECURED [geobqe II. 

of failures of the preceding year. The unlucky Byng was court-, 
martialed and shot on his own quarter-deck, — as Voltaire observed, 
„ ,^ "to encourage the rest." An expedition under Hawke 

Further ° .... 

English ^nd Mor daunt aarainst Rochefort ended in ignominious 

disasters, ° ° 

^757. disaster. Loudon and Holbourne set out to take 

Quebec but accomplished nothing. In August Fort William 
Henry, after a brave defense by the gallant Colonel Monro, was 
forced to capitulate, and a part of the garrison were massacred by 
a lot of drunken savages who had broken away from the control of 
Montcalm and his officers. 

It was at this darkest hour of the struggle, when Hanover had 
been forced to pledge itself to a disgraceful neutrality, when Prus- 
sia had been overrun, when the navy of England had 

Turning of \^Qpj^ clrivcn from the Mediterranean, when her troops 
the tide, 1757- ^ 

had been expelled from the Ohio country and the last 

vestige of her power had been destroyed within the basin of the 
St. Lawrence, that the unseemly quarrel between the Whig 
leaders was healed, and Pitt, given a free hand in the conduct of 
the war, began to marshal the mighty strength of the empire and 
impart something of his own feverish energy, his enthusiasm, and 
his sublime courage, to the armies and navies of Britain. The 
strings thrilled with a new touch. Frederick recognized the hand 
of a master and exclaimed, "At last England has brought forth 
aman. " Yet the first successes were quite independent of any 
influence of Pitt or his fellow ministers. At the very darkest 
moment of Frederick's career, when England was paralyzed and 
Hanover disarmed, when his own kingdom was overrun from the 
east and the south, and his enemies were actually levying requisi- 
tions in the streets of Berlin, the cloud suddenly rifted at Ross- 
bach; on November 5, 1757, Frederick swept down upon a copi- 
bined French and Austrian army of twice the size of his own and 
completely overwhelmed it. A month Inter a second victory at 
Leuthen recovered Breslau and saved Silesia. In the meanwhile 
swift sailing ships were bringing great news from India. Olive, 
whom ill health had compelled to return to England, was again on 
his way to the scene of his earlier triumphs, when the Seven Years' 
War opened. At Madras he heard of the Black Hole of Oal- 



1757] PL ASSET 905 

cutta and at once prepared to show Surajah Dowlah how 
Englishmen could fight when once their blood was roused. After 
a few, sharp, quick blows, by which he recovered both Calcntta 
and Hugli, in Febrnary he compelled the terrified Nawab to make 
peace. The French, however, and not the English, were still the 
great people of India, and the rumor of the new war encouraged 
Surajah Dowlah to think that with their support he had no 
occasion to fear his recent foes. But Clive, without waiting for 
the treacherous Nawab to strike, at once began hostilities on his 
own account and in May took Chandernagor. The Nawab sum- 
moned his vassal princes to arms, and on the 22d of June lay 
encamped on the plains of Plassey; a vast host of 35,000 foot and 
15,000 horse, supported by 50 cannon. To oppose them Clive 
could muster only 800 Europeans and some 2,000 Sepoys, or native 
Indian troops, and 8 cannon. A council of war advised a retreat; 
but Clive knew that the hosts of Surajah Dowlah were honeycombed 
with dissatisfaction and treason ; he held in his own hands the 
strings of an extensive plot among the Bengalese, and, knowing that 
if these men were to be trusted he really had nothing to fear, on 
the morning of the 23d he advanced to give battle to his huge 
antagonist. The vast host which covered the plain was thrown 
into confusion as soon as the English cannon shot began to 
ricochet among the dense ranks, and at the first charge of the 
English broke and fled. The moral efl'ect of the victory upon 
the oriental mind was final. The superiority of the English sol- 
diers and of European methods of war over the Indian was accepted, 
and from henceforth the supremacy of the English in the Orient 
was unquestioned. 

Pitt's policy was simple. He proposed to support Frederick 
by restoring the military strength of Hanover and by pouring Eng- 
lish gold into the wasted treasury of Prussia, while he 
^^[^'^ himself gathered all the fighting strength of the British 

Empire to meet France on the seas and wherever their 
colonial interests came into contact. Accordingly he persuaded 
George to repudiate the Convention of Closter-Seven while he 
gathered an army of English and Hanoverians on the Elbe under 
Ferdinand of Brunswick, one of the ablest of Frederick's generals; 



906 THE OCEAN' EMPIRE SECURED [gkokge II. 

in April he agreed in a new subsidy treaty to furnish Frederick 
with £670,000 a year. In America, he planned for a grand series 
of attacks along the whole line of frontier. The uniform success 
of these enterprises vindicated their wisdom. On July 8, Aber- 
crombie failed in the attack on Ticonderoga. But on the 26th, 
Boscawen and Amherst took Louisburg and as a result the English 
secured both Cape Breton Island and St. John, now Prince 
Edward Island. In August Bradstreet with a colonial army cap- 
tured Frontenac, and in November Forbes took Fort Duquesne 
and renamed it Fort Pitt. In other parts of the world the same 
intelligent vigor brought equal laurels to the English arms. In 
May the English seized Fort St. Louis in Senegal, and in Decem- 
ber added Goree Island off Cape Verde. Expeditions were also 
dispatched directly against the arsenals of St. Malo and Cherbourg. 
The French saved St. Malo, but Cherbourg and its stores were 
destroyed. In June the Prince of Brunswick defeated the French 
at Crefeld and drove them out of western Germany. Frederick 
in the meantime continued to hold his own, on August 25 beating 
the Russians at Zorndorf on the Oder, and though surprised by 
Daun at Hochkirchen in October, finally drove the Austrians out 
of Saxony. 

The next year, however, was gloomy enough for Prussia. 
From all sides Frederick's powerful neighbors advanced to attack 

his little kingdom. On August 12, a combined Aus- 
Thc iiecLV of o 3 

Minden, trian-Russian army routed him at Kunersdorf. A few 

Quiberon, days later Daun took Dresden, and an attempt of the 

1759. . . . . 

Prussians to regain their lost ground met with a terri- 
ble punishment. Yet Frederick had no thought of submission, 
and winter found him still at bay behind his frontiers, as plucky 
and determined as ever, while his enemies were practically back to 
the point from which they had started in the spring. Moreover, if 
the year had gone hard against Frederick, the tide of fortune had 
rolled in strong for England. The year 1759 was the year of 
Minden, Quebec, and Quiberon. France had planned to match 
the mighty armament which Austria and Russia were to pour into 
Prussia, by throwing an army of 50,000 men into Hanover, 
Prince Ferdinand was compelled to retire before the advancing 



1759, 1760] THE YEAK OF QUEBEC 907 

army, losing many men at Bergen on April 13. But in August, 
although greatly outnumbered, he confronted the French Marshals, 
Contades and Broglie, at Minden. The chief feature of the battle 
was a noble charge of six English regiments, which broke the 
French center and in an hour's time decided the fortunes of the 
day. The French army, completely shattered, was compelled to 
fall back on the Rhine, and Hanover was again saved. So rapidly 
came the victories now that Englishmen ceased to wonder; Byng 
and Minorca, Braddook and Fort Duquesne, were forgotten in the 
marvelous news that came from Madras, from Ceylon, from 
Guadeloupe, from Havre, which Rodney bombarded for fifty hours, 
destroying an entire fleet which was equip23ing for a descent upon 
England, from Lagos in Portugal where Boscawen sank the French 
Mediterranean fleet, and again from Quiberon Bay, where on 
November 20, Sir Edward Hawke in spite of rocky reefs and 
rolling seas, engaged and annihilated the French Channel fleet. 
Then the bells had hardly ceased ringing when from America 
came the news of the triumph of the year, the capture of Quebec 
by Wolfe on September 18. 

The English had now passed from a war of defense to one of 

conquest. It was Pitt's purpose to exterminate the sea power of 

France and appropriate her colonial possessions wlier- 

Changein ever they fell into the hands of the English. The 

the object of 

the war, 1760. next year the flagging enemy was pushed more 
remorselessly than ever. On January 22 Count Lally, 
the son of an Irish refugee, who after the retirement of Dupleix 
had been made the French Governor-General of India, was defeated 
by Colonel Eyre Coote at AYandewash, and in 1761 the siege and 
capture of Poudicherry virtually ended the French occupation 
of the Karnatik, Although the trading stations were restored in 
the subsequent treaty of peace, the now well established supremacy 
of England on the sea put an end to all farther competition in 
India. England was mistress in the Orient. In America the 
French with their forts gone, Quebec taken, and Montcalm dead, 
made but a feeble resistance, and with the surrender of Montreal 
on September 8, 1760, the French occupation of Canada also 
came to an end. 



908 THE OCEAN EMPIRE SECURED [george III. 

On the continent, however, England's ally was begmning to 
show unmistakable signs of exhaustion. Prussia could not stand 
the terrible strain much longer. England might continue her 
supplies of money, but she could not restore the young manhood 
of Prussia, with whose graves a score of battlefields were fur- 
rowed. Prince Ferdinand kept up the fight in Westphalia, but he 
was forced to allow the French to Avinter in western Germany. 
Frederick himself could not turn rapidly enough from frontier to 
frontier to meet his many enemies, and the very moment when far 
away in the south he was retaking Leipsic and overwhelming Dauii 
at Torgau, the Russians were ravaging Brandenburg and occupying 
Berlin. 

Torgau, November 1760, was the last pitched battle of the war 
on the continent. George II. had died October 25, 1760, and with 
the new king an entirely new phase was given to English politics. 
George III. shrank from the war of conquest which Pitt was now 
waging; but more serious than his opposition to Pitt's policy of 
"coloring the map red," was his determination to end the long 
reign of the Whig oligarchy and rescue the crown from the tyranny 
of the constitutional conventions by which the AVhigs had main- 
tained their power. He had been nurtured in the atmosphere of 
Bolingbroke's "Patriot King," and believed in his right to govern 
as well as his right to reign. He believed, also, that if he would 
escape slavery to a faction he mnst place himself above parties. 

From the first, therefore, the new king was opposed to the 
Newcastle-Pitt ministry, and was determined to end both the 
armaments of Pitt and the methods of Newcastle, His 
^^^JI,^{Jlil chief adviser was John Stuart, Earl of Bute, his old 
Pitt minis- tutor, a Tory of the Bolingbroke type, who regarded the 
overthrow of the Whig power of paramount importance 
to all other issues. In March, upon the retirement of Holdernesse, 
Pitt's colleague in the Secretarj^ship, Bute was put in his place. 
Between Pitt and Bute there could be no harmony and on October 
5, 1761 Pitt offered his resignation. "He had been called to 
the ministry," he said, "by the voice of the people and as he was 
accountable to them, he would not remain responsible for meas- 
ures which he was not allowed to guide." In May 1762, upon the 



1761-1763] THE TREATY OF PARIS 909 

withdrawal of the subsidies from Prussia, which had so long 
formed the basis of the Newcastle- Pitt policy, Newcastle also 
retired. 

Thus ended one of the strongest ministries that England has 

ever known; but its work was already done. In August 1761 

Spain, led by her new king, Charles III., renewed the 

The dawn i. ^ j o ' 

of peace. family compact with France, but her assistance counted 

The third j i. 

Bourbon little in the balance against the overwhelming supe- 
pact, August riority of England. In August 1762 Eodney took 

Havana and in October Draper took Manila. It was 
evident that it was useless to carry the war further; the interfer- 
ence of Spain had only dragged down her colonial empire with 

the wreck of the French. In November preliminaries 

Tl\ s Tv€(xtxf of 

Paris, Fcbru- of pcace wcrc signed at Fontaineblean, and on February 
"^^ ' ' 10th following, were finally accepted at Paris by the 
three western powers. Great Britain, France, and Spain. By the 
terms of these treaties (1) France ceded to England Canada and 
Cape Breton Island, the Island of Granada in the West Indies, and 
her possessions in Africa on the Senegal; the Mississippi was 
recognized as the boundary between Louisiana and the British 
colonies. (2) Spain ceded Florida to England, having already 
received Louisiana from France as indemnity. (3) England 
restored to France Goree in Africa, the Islands of Martinique, 
Bellisle, St. Lucia, and her French conquests in India; to Spain, 
all conquests in Cuba including Havana. Manila was restored 
without any equivalent as the news of its fall did not arrive till 
after the peace preliminaries had been signed. 

Elizabeth of Russia, the old enemy of Frederick, died in Jan- 
uary 1762. Her successor was the young and brilliant Peter III. 
who was an enthusiastic admirer of Frederick and has- 
Wub^rt%urg, teucd to transfer the support of Russia from Austria to 
Feb. 15, 1763. p^.yggia. But the Russia-Prussian alliance had hardly 
been concluded when Peter was murdered by his German wife, 
who succeeded him as Catharine II. and at once reversed the past 
policy of Russia by withdrawing from all interference in German 
affairs. France had long since become too weak to help Austria, 
and Austria alone could scarcely hope to cope with Prussia. 



910 THE OCEAN" EMPIRE SECURED [george ill. 

Prussia on the other hand was bleedmg at every vein and had no 
wish to carry her duel with Austria farther. Accordingly on 
February 15, five days after the signing of the Treaty of Paris, at 
the Saxon castle of Hubertsburg Prussia and Austria also agreed 
to lay down their arms. The territorial lines were restored virtually 
as they had existed at the beginning of the war. But Prussia 
remained in possession of Silesia; her claim to rauk among the 
great powers of Europe had been established. 

Thus at last the war which had been begun by the aggression 
of France in the new world, which had destroyed the light in 
hundreds of thousands of European homes, which had 
semn^Years' devoured untold wealth, was ended. What had been 
^^'' gained! By the powers on the continent nothing; but 

by England everything, Spain was allowed to get back her 
colonies, but France, who had been the cause of all the trouble, 
had lost her splendid empire beyond the seas ; while England at 
once mounted to the supremacy which she has since enjoyed as 
the one great ocean j)ower of the world. Yet England also had not 
been without fault in the matter and her day of humiliation and 
punishment, coming from a source from which she least expected 
it, was not far off. Her complete triumph over France in the new 
world, made the American Ee volution not only possible, but inevit- 
able. In 1763 the French statesman Vergennes declared that in 
winning Canada England had removed the only check which could 
keep her American colonies in awe; "She will call upon them to 
contribute towards supporting the burdens which they have 
helped to bring upon her; they will answer by striking off all 
dependence." 



CHAPTER V 

GEOKOE III. THE FIRST PERIOD OF TORT RULE AISTD THE LOSS OF 
THE AMERICAN COLONIES 

GEORGE III., 1763-1783 

The sixty years of the reign of George III. is the era in which 
the England of the Restoration passes into the England which we 

know to-day. The England of 1760 was not very 
Oeoroein.'s different from the England of 1660. The foreign 
sitian period, wars of the Commonwealth and the early Restoration 

era had left England in control of the carrying trade 
which had once enriched the Dutch, The wars which had followed 
the Revolution had also tended to enrich the commercial classes, 
greatly extending and deepening all channels of commercial enter- 
prise. Manufacturing industry had grown steadily, particularly 
in the half century which had followed the death of William, and 
the center of population had continued to move from the region 
of the southern seaport towns to the new manufacturing towns 
of the north. Yet the great bulk of the population were still 
earning a livelihood in the old way, either by farming or trading. 
The rough goods worn by the common people were largely made 
in England; but production was limited by old methods. The 
machines which were used for making cotton goods, were hardly 
in advance of those used in India. The iron furnaces of Sussex 
and Surrey were still stoked with wood from the neighboring 
forests. There was coal in abundance stored away in the rocks, 
but there was no machinery by which it could be mined to 
advantage. The primitive means of communication still in vogue, 
were as serious a drawback to the development of industry or 
trade as the lack of machinery or coal. Goods were still trans- 
ferred to or from inland towns by pack horses in the hill country 
or by ponderous wains in the low country. The condition of the 
roads, wretched at all times, but at certain seasons altogether 

911 



912 FIEST PERIOD OF TORY RULE [geokge ill. 

impassable, added greatly to the difficulty and expense of trans- 
portation. The huge wagons dug the roads into ugly ruts or 
stirred them into bottomless quags. The road menders dumped 
into such places endless cart loads of loose stones, but only to add 
to the discomfort of the passengers or encourage the profanity of 
the drivers. The model of Bunyan's Slough of Despond could be 
found upon most any of the great transinsular highways, swim- 
ming with fathomless mud and fringed with broken cart wheels or 
abandoned wains. 

In the early years of George III.'s reign, however, all this 

began to change. A remarkable series of inventions greatly 

increased the efficiency of labor, while numerous and 

Improvement widely extended improvements in the means of trans- 

in npinnmg J ^ 

'^'^'un^^ portation correspondingly facilitated the distribution of 
the increased output. The flying shuttle which had 
been invented by John Kay in 1733, had doubled the productive 
power of the weaver ; but the weaver was still handicapped by the 
difficulties which attended the old methods of spinning, by which 
his yarn was supplied. A generation passed and the art of cloth- 
making seemed to have reached the limit of improvement, when in 
1769 a series of advances was inaugurated in the invention by a 
Bolton barber named Richard Arkwright, of a system of spinning 
by revolving rollers. The next year James Hargreaves, a weaver 
of Blackburn, took out a patent for his spinning jenny, which 
multiplied the efficiency of the old hand spinning a hundred fold. 
Nine years later Samuel Crompton combined the ideas of Ark- 
wright and Hargreaves in his "mule" and added the spindle car- 
riage, which prevented the annoying breaking of threads. These 
improvements, used first in the manufacture of cotton, were 
gradually applied to woollen manufacturing as well. 

The first effect of these improvements in the art of spinning 
was to produce a great deal of anxiety and even actual distress. 
Yarn making soon outstripped weaving. The spinners 
ofateamto found it difficult to dispose of their products; prices 
fell, and the old fashioned liand spinners, unable to com- 
pete, began to be crowded out. Relief came in a corresponding 
revolution in the art of weaving, which followed the remarkable 



1764-1785] IMPORTANT INVEKTIONS 913 

inventions that date from the year 1785. The steam engine had 
already been in use for some time as an adjunct to mining, where 
it furnished the power for the pumps. It was, however, a chimsy, 
impractical, primitive sort of machine, and each year cost a small 
fortune in fuel. In 1764 the attention of James Watt, an instru- 
ment maker of Glasgow, had been called to the machine then in 
use, and after ten years of vexatious disappointments, he finally 
succeeded in making the improvements which have given us the 
useful machine of modern commerce. Of one of his earlier experi- 
ments he writes in grim humor : "The velocity, violence, magnitude, 
and horrible noise of the engine gave universal satisfaction to all 
beholders." In the twenty years which followed, Watt's perfected 
machine came into general use, furnishing the motive power in 
almost all kinds of manufacturing industry, in weaving among the 
first. In 1785, Edmund Cartwright, a Yorkshire clergyman, 
took out a patent for a power loom ; a clumsy machine at first, 
which required the attention of two men, even when running at 
a low rate, but it kept the mules busy. Later he perfected his 
machine, and it began to be felt as a new power in all kinds of 
textile industries. Afterwards he also patented a wool-combing 
machine which greatly improved the quality of the wool and did 
the work of twenty hand combers. 

The extensive introduction of labor saving machinery at once 
disturbed the old industrial equilibrium. Workmen saw their 

livelihood taken from them, and turned their fury upon 
Social results the new inventions. Spinning Jennys and power looms 
machinery, were sniaslicd by infuriated mobs. At a time when 

Cartwright had just received an order from a Manches- 
ter firm for four hundred of his power looms, his factory was 
burned, probably the work of incendiaries, and a bill was actually 
presented in .parliament, which forbade the use of his wool-comb- 
ing machine under severe penalties. The improved methods of 
manufacturing, however, very soon increased the demand for 
labor. New enterprises invaded the quiet moorland valleys of the 
west and north, where the cheap coal and abundant water supply 
offered special advantages. Older sites, as Norwich, Leeds, and 
Halifax, rapidly increased their output. The population, also, 



914 FIRST PERIOD OF TORY RULE [ 



George III. 



naturally drifted to these centers, doubling and trebling in a very 
few years. 

It was upon the iron trade that Watt's great invention perhaps 

had the most direct influence. In 1740 the entire production of 

England did not exceed 17,350 tons. The engine of 

Production '\Yatt at once made the deep mining of coal practicable 

of iron. 1 o 1 ^ 

and thus removed the last difficulty in the way of iron 
smelting. The years 1755 to 1762 saw works started in Stirling- 
shire, in South Wales, and in the neighborhood of Birmingham, 
where Watt himself became a partner in the Soho works. By the 
end of the century the annual output of England had reached 
170,000 tons. 

Other industries also shared in the new era. The cheaper 
manufacture of iron affected in turn every other line where iron 
tools or iron machinery were used. In 1763 the potteries of South 
Staffordshire, where Josiah Wedgewood succeeded in producing 
the famous "Queens Ware," had begun to attract attention. In 
1785 these potteries employed 15,000 men. In 1773 plate glass 
making was begun in Lancashire. 

The increasing volume of trade, the shifting of population to 
new methods of gaining a livelihood, the changing social condi- 
tions, in turn demanded better methods of communica- 
Effectupoii i\qy^ qy exchange. During the first fourteen years of 

roads. o o j 

George III. 's reign parliament passed 452 separate acts 
for repairing roads. The turnpike, or toll road, became general, 
and before the end of the century smooth, hard roads stretched 
away from all the great cities, along which stage coaches made 
regular and, for the time, rapid trips, carrying mail and passengers 
with dispatch and some comfort ; over four hundred towns could 
boast of one mail a day. 

One wonders that the long and close acquaintance of the Eng- 
lish with the Dutch had never suggested the adoption as an English 

institution of the canal, which was as well suited to 

Canal some parts of England as to Holland. It was not, how- 

buildmg. r iri ' 

ever, until 1761 that the islanders seriously took to 
canalling, when Francis Duke of Bridgewater with the help of 
the self educated engineer Brindley, built a canal from his Worsley 



1761-1793] THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION" ^ 915 

collieries to Manchester. Later he extended his canal to the 
Mersey, thus connecting Manchester and Liverpool, and diminish- 
ing the price of coal in Manchester from seven pence per hundred 
to three and one-half pence. Tlie example of the successful work- 
ing of this ship canal and the profits which came to the enterpris- 
ing duke, who was thus made independent of the whims of the 
Mersey, were not lost upon the public. In a short time a canal- 
building craze took possession of investors in some such way 
as the railroad building craze has from time to time caught the 
American public. Within George's reign nearly 3,000 miles of 
canals were constructed; 165 acts sui3Eiciently testify to the interest 
of parliament. The chief of these great works were the ship canal 
between the Forth and the Clyde, begun in 1768 and completed 
in 1790; the Ellesmere Canal, begun in 1793, connecting the 
Severn and the Mersey, by crossing the valley of the Dee over a 
marvelous viaduct whose arches were sprung seventy feet above the 
river; and the great ship canal which enabled ships to reach 
Gloucester from the lower Severn. These waterways were to the 
industrial England of the last two Georges what the railways 
have been to the England of Victoria, or to the America of the 
later nineteenth century. They furnished the means by which heavy 
goods, especially machinery, could be transported to distant points 
safely, easily, and cheaply. 

The development of new lines of industrial activity acted 

directly upon the entire English social structure. The volume of 

trade steadily increased, but the increase called out a 

Social aspects fierce, keen spirit of competition. The wise, the cun- 

of 'tTbdustiT'ictL 

revolution. niug, and thrifty survived ; while the stupid, the lazy, 
and the thriftless were crowded to the wall. The suc- 
cessful operators began to combine forces ; the master workman, 
working in his own cottage, assisted by one or two journeymen 
and an apprentice lad or two, gave way to the wealthy manufac- 
turer who reared a huge factory and gathered into it a small army 
of men, women, and children, who toiled long hours feeding his 
machines while he sat in his office dividing his attention between 
his balance sheet and the market. The picture is not an attractive 
one; the new "captain of industry" was often hard, illiterate. 



916 FIRST PERIOD OF TORT RULE [ 



George III. 



without heart or culture; he looked upon his workmen as he 
looked upon his machines, — to be easily worn out and to be as 
easily replaced. The workmen were poor and ignorant ; all their 
surroundings were brutalizing. They were without schools and 
without churches. Their working days were spent in dreary 
hours of toil in dark, ill smelling, dingy factories ; their nights in 
shabby, ill kept, and unhealthy brick cottages; their Sundays in 
the public house. For this weary multitude the state did nothing, 
save to recruit their ranks from the children of the poor-houses, 
who were regularly transported to the slavery of the factory as 
soon as they were able thus to relieve the public of their keep. 
The state had no thought of protecting the factory hands from the 
greed of the master; the new towns were not represented in par- 
liament; labor was not yet organized, and the toiling multitude 
had no means known to the constitution by which they could 
command the attention of the men who made the laws and quar- 
reled over the patronage of the government. Yet these workmen 
were not so sotted that they could not think. In a blind, vague 
way, they realized that something was wrong somewhere, but they 
could not tell just what or where. Hence they offered a ready 
field for the agitator, eagerly listening to the most dangerous and 
violent doctrines which at least promised to punish their oppressors. 
Side by side with the development of the industrial life of 
England there was also progressing a like revolution in the agri- 
cultural life of the people. The causes were virtually 
remhluon!'^^ ^^^^ same: the increase in population, the greater 
demand for the products of farm labor, and the encour- 
agment to capital to concentrate in the interests of economy and 
larger profits. At the beginning of George III. 's reign, by the 
old system which had been handed down from generation to 
generation, probably from days which preceded the Norman Con- 
quest, the land about a village was still cultivated in common. 
The farmers had little skill, little capital with which to keep up 
stock and tools, and little inducement to improve the land. 
Drainage was impossible; winter crops could not be grown; sheep 
and cattle were left to herd promiscuously; disease generated 
easily ; and any improvement of live stock was not to be thought of. 



1785-1793] ARTHUR TOUKG 917 

The increase of population, however, soon began materially to 
affect the demand for farm products, and not only encouraged the 
adoption of improved methods, but also hastened the 
AgrZuiture ^^'^"^^ ^^ capital toward agricultural industry. Waste 
lands were brought under cultivation; the open field 
system began to be abandoned and the rights to the commons 
extinguished. Marling became general; a fourfold rotation of 
crops took the place of the old wasteful three field system ; the 
culture of the turnip, corn, and rye grass, was introduced. Scien- 
tific methods of breeding also were adopted. In 1785 the famous 
Leicestershire sheep appeared, "giving two pounds of mutton, 
where there was only one before." The long horned "Dishley 
breed" of cattle also won a worthy reputation; later to be sup- 
planted by the more famous "Durham," the short horn breed of 
the Tees valley. 

For the spread of more intelligent ideas on the subject of agri- 
culture, much credit is due to the agricultural and economic 
writer, Arthur Young. He traveled extensively in 
■f^Jl]]'^ England, Wales, Ireland, and France; observed closely 

and scientifically the agricultural conditions of the era; 
made extensive experiments himself; gathered useful statistics, 
and sought to diffuse a more scientific knowledge of agriculture 
through the country. In 1793 he was appointed Secretary of the 
Board of Agriculture. 

The improvements were very great, but there was also much 
loss and suffering. New ideas had invaded the old stolid life of 
the country side; but they brought changes in their 
fering^caustd ^^'^^'^ ^^ marked as those introduced by the factory sys- 
^hangT^^^ tem in the cities. The old farmer had led an independ- 
ent, contented life; his fields were small, ^ but he could 
eke out his meagre earnings by setting up a small factory in his 
house. He was generally sure of his market. The government 
encouraged exportation of grain and when the price fell below 48 
shillings a quarter, added a bounty of 5 shillings. But now the 



^ The average acreage to each farmer was about eighteen acres of 
arable land and ten acres of meadow. 



918 FIKST PEEIOD OF TOKY RULE [george ill. 

capitalist farmer came in; small farms disappeared and with 
them the common field farmer, who became a "hired day laborer." 

Three thousand "Enclosure Acts" were passed in the 
'sureAcU""'of I'^igii 0^ Gcorge III. By the middle of the next century 
^ffJ^'^^-'-^-'^ seven million acres had been taken from the people and 

turned into private property. Like the factory, the 
farm was conducted more scientifically, with better tools and with 
better results, but the average agricultural laborer had no share 
in the fruits of this prosperity. The expense of living was 
increasing, but the awful pressure of subsistence compelled the 
laborer to compete with his fellow, until at last it became neces- 
sary for the state to add to his wages by way of a poor law dole. 
At the opening of the next century it was estimated that one 
seventh of the population received relief under the poor law. A 
strange phenomenon! England was getting richer but pauperism 
was increasing at an appalling rate. 

The anomaly, however, is not hard to explain. Abnormal 
conditions, favored by unjust laws, enabled the employer to 

monopolize all the profits. The old yeomanry were 
Jcpiaincd"'^ goiic and the small squire was following him rapidly. 

The land was passing into the hands of an ever nar- 
rowing circle of wealthy land owners, who made laws in their own 
interests, shut out competition of foreign food stuffs while they 
forced their laborers to work for wages below the possibility of 
living, and then, when they had pauperized them, called upon the 
state to piece out their wages with a dole by way of charity. 

There were not wanting those who read intelligently the signs 
of the times, and boldly sought to put the finger on the cause of 

the accumulating miseries of the people. In 1776 
AdmnSmm -^^^^ Smith, a Professor in the University of Glasgow, 

published his Wealth of Nations, in which he proposed 
to throw down the artificial restrictions which human lavv'S were 
throwing around the life of the nation, causing the congestion 
and the poverty; only by free trade could a healthy condition 
be restored once more. He was widely read and studied, and his 
views soon began to affect the policy of statesmen like the younger 
Pitt, who tried to carry them out, when he came to be Prime 



• THE ENGLAND OE GEOEGE III. 919 

Minister of England. Other voices were not so hopeful. In 
1798 Malthus sought to show that the evil lay in overpopulation, 
and that improved methods of production were of little use, when 
the rapidly increasiDg population was ever eating itself poor. 

It was over this new world, stirring with unwonted life, that 
George III. was called to reign. The eighteenth century system 
was breaking up. The old trading and farming Eng- 
over'ivhMi^'^ land was merging in the industrial Great Britain. The 
wascaiied' factory System was increasing the population of the 
toreicjn. towns and in turn opening new avenues for the accumu- 
lation of private wealth, undermining the strength and influence 
of the older rural population, widening the gap between wealth and 
poverty, drawing the laboring classes into the stifling atmosphere 
of the factory town and the workshop, bringing in new conditions 
and raising new problems, in the light of which the maxims of the 
older statesmen appeared shallow and puerile; their principles, 
outworn cant; their boasted policies, useless rubbish. 

At the time of his royal grandfather's death George III. was 
twenty-two years old. The nation hailed his accession with bois- 
terous enthusiasm. Unlike his Hanoverian predeces- 
Geor'^fTii^ sors he was thoroughly English both in his tastes and 
his habits. His courtesy won friends; his personal 
purity won confldence and esteem. He could "name every ship 
in the English navy; had the articles of war at his flnger's ends; 
paid his bills every quarter; wore none but clothes of English 
manufacture," and "like a decent Christian" attended chnrch 
every Sunday, Prayer Book in hand, accompanied by his wife and 
attended by his numerous children as soon as they were old enough to 
sit out the service withont disturbing the slumber of their august 
father. Yet this monarch of homely habits, whose irreproachable 
life was so marked in contrast with the stupid libertinism of his 
predecessor, had his serious defects. His education had not been 
neglected, but it had been faulty. With a right royal license he 
persisted in spelling the mother tongue in his own way. Some of 
his eccentricities would delight the modern spelling reformer. 
Thus "bottles" under the royal hand was always "botills," but 
"champagne" masqueraded as "shannipane." His ideas were a 



920 FIRST PERIOD OF TORT RULE [ 



George III. 



curious deposit of ignorance, bigotry, and stupidity. He was, 
moreover, hopelessly, incurably obstinate; a trait which he owed 
to the unfortunate combination of a narrow intellect "with strong 
will, high courage, and vigorous character." 

When the new king began his reign he undertook the praise- 
worthy task of breaking up the ring of old Whig families which 

had controlled the government since the days of Anne. 
ol'Siii. ^^ ^^^^^^ himself a Whig of the Revolution. He had 

no sympathy with the principle of party government; 
he believed that as king it was his duty to ignore parties alto- 
gether, to select the best men for his ministry, and, by control- 
ling them himself, restore to the crown the power which the Whig 
leaders had so long usurped. In this program George partly suc- 
ceeded and partly failed. He broke up the old Whig ring; 
vindicated the right of the sovereign to choose what ministers he 
would, and once more made the royal power a reality. To accom- 
plish this end he was compelled to draw near to the Tories, who 
had been freed from the blight of Jacobitism, and now most nearly 
represented the ideas of the king himself. It took the slow mind 
of George, however, some time to grasp the real conditions which 
confronted him; but by 1770 he had learned his lesson; and from 
1770 to the end of his reign, in fact until 1830, the Tory rule 
was virtually unbroken.^ 

Outside of parliament it had been long understood that the 
Houses were in the hands of a corrupt ring, and that they no longer 

represented the will of the nation; the old distinctions 
varhf"^^'^ between Whig and Tory, also, had lost their meaning, 

and the people discovered with delight that at last 
England again had a king who proposed to rule as well as reign. 
Within parliament, George found little trouble in drawing about 
himself a party devoted to his ideas; for high as was his ultimate 
aim, although he hated the corrupt rule of the wealthy Whig fam- 
ilies as much as Pitt, he did not hesitate to adopt Newcastle's 
methods in making friends. When bribery failed, he used intimi- 
dation. Discontented Whigs, like the elder Fox, who thought that 

» There were tM^o brief interims, 1782-1784 and 1806-1808, when George 
was forced to accept ministers of the Whig faith. 



1762] JOHK WILKES 921 

they had not received their due share of public plunder, hailed 
with delight the rising of the new sun in the political firmament 
and hastened to secure each his orbit in the new group of satellites. 
The Tories ranged themselves on the king's side as a matter of 
course. It was not long before the "King's Friends" began to be 
known as a secret influence in parliament, always to be reckoned 
with. 

Bute's administration was a short one. In 1763, within two 

months of the signing of the Treaty of Paris, he gave way to 

George Grenville, Grenville was honest himself, but 

G'KCTWi-llC' 

Bedford min- he was compelled to yoke with the duke of Bedford for 
the sake of his following in the Commons, which he 

maintained by all the corrupt methods of Walpole and Newcastle. 
Two serious blunders have rendered Grenville's administration 

memorable, the Wilkes Affair and the Stamp Act. Since the 
expiration of the Licensing Act of 1G95, the ffovern- 

The govern '- ° ' t> 

mentandthe ment had contented itself with restricting the activity 
of "the press" by levying upon each newspaper a duty, 
which had increased from one penny in 1712 to four pence in 
1760. The Whig oligarchy was too strongly intrenched to worry 
itself over any criticism which came from j)arties outside of parlia- 
ment, although a breach of the law of libel or of the privilege of 
parliament might be severely handled by the courts. But in the 
storms which followed the accession of George, the governing 
oligarchy became more sensitive and soon showed symptoms of 
returning to older methods of interfering with the freedom of the 
press. 

In June 1762 John Wilkes, a worthless demagogue, likewise 

member of the House of Commons, began an opposition newspaper 

which he called The Worth Briton. In the famous 

andthe "No. 45," which appeared in April 1763,^ he attacked 

"North 

Britmh^ a reccut royal address in which the king had com- 

mended the Peace of Paris to his parliament. Wilkes, 
assuming that the speech was the work of the king's ministers, 
declared it to be "the most abandoned instance of ministerial 

^ Lee, Source Book, pp. 467-473. 



922 FIRST PERIOD OF TORY RULE [georgb in. 

effrontery ever attempted to be imposed upon mankind." The 
king was deeply offended by what he regarded as a personal attack, 
and insisted that the Secretary of State, Lord Halifax, should issue 
a general warrant for all concerned in the issue of the offensive 
No. 45 of The North Briton. Some forty-nine persons, including 
the publishers, printers, and lastly Wilkes himself, were drawn 
into the official net. 

So far the course of the government had been easy enough, but 
when the king wished to punish the insolent pamphleteer by 
imposing upon him something more than a simple 
mecouru'^ arrest, he was made at once conscious of the wide differ- 
ence between the England of the later eighteenth cen- 
tury and the England of the days of Stuart tyranny. To punish 
Wilkes he must resort to the courts. The judges, moreover, were 
no longer the creatures of the king. The act of 1701 had taken 
from the crown the right to dismiss Judges at pleasure; George 
III. himself, at the beginning of his reign, had abandoned the 
ancient custom by which the commissions of the judges were 
regarded as lapsing with 'the death of the last king, and, further, 
had separated the salaries of the Judges from the civil list, thus 
sweeping away almost the last vestige of the old dependent judi- 
ciary. When, therefore, Wilkes appealed to the courts, his 
appeal was treated very differently from the way in which such 
appeals were treated in the days of Judge Jeffreys. In May, 
upon a writ of habeas corpus, Wilkes secured a hearing before 
Chief Justice Pratt of the Common Pleas, and upon pleading 
his privilege as a member of parliament was released. Justice 
Pratt, also, condemned the general warrant as illegal, and in 
July several of the printers recovered damages. Later, Wilkes 
liimself received £1,000 damages from the Under-Secretary of State, 
Wood, who had carried out the directions of his chief in seizing 
Wilkes's paper. He began suit against Halifax, also, for illegal 
imprisonment and won after a fight of six years. 

Wilkes was now the popular hero of the hour. Even Pitt sup- 
ported him upon the broad ground that an illegal arrest was an 
invasion of the liberties of the people. The king, however, was 
not satisfied, and by his influence in the House persuaded the 



1765] THE STAMP ACT 923 

Commons to enter the lists where the courts had failed him. They 
declared the unfortunate No. 45 to be "a false, scandalous, and 

seditious libel," refused to allow the privilege of parlia- 
wimes and nicnt to cover the culprit, and ended by formally expel- 

ling him from the House. Wilkes had also fallen foul of 
the Upper House where he was brought to book for printing and 
privately circulating a coarse parody on Pope's "Essay on Man," 
called au "Essay on Woman," and also for printing a blasphemous 
imitation of the "Veni Creator." The Lords declared the publica- 
tious a breach of privilege and a "scandalous, obscene, and 
impious libel." But unfortunately for the effect of these 
well merited reproofs, the chief accuser of Wilkes was the profli- 
gate Lord Sandwich, renowned for his prolonged bouts at the 
gambling table, which he would not leave even for meals, and 
where his servant was accustomed to bring him the light refection 
which still bears his name. The people, who were fully convinced 
of the corruption of parliament, regarded the formal denuncia- 
tion of their idol as one more evidence of his worth. The govern- 
ment, encouraged by the acts of the two Houses, resumed the 
prosecution upon the charge of libel, and Wilkes, no longer pro- 
tected by the privilege of a member of parliament, fled to the 
continent, allowing his case to go against him by default. In 
February 1764, he was formally outlawed by decree of the court. 
The government had carried its point, but every step taken had 
been "ill advised, vindictive, and substantially unjust," increasing 
its discredit with the people and awakening a dangerous spirit of 
insubordination. 

The second serious blunder of the Grenville-Bedford ministry 
was the passage of the famous "Stamp Act. " The recent wars had 

raised the national debt to £130,000,000. The minis- 
Act," March, try accepted the obligation of reducing this burden, 

now that peace had been restored, but the method 
which Grenville proposed was unfortunately as annoying to a large 
part of the British Empire as the old ship money of Charles I. He 
proposed (1) to establish in America a portion of the British regular 
army amounting to 10,000 men. To support this resident gar- 
rison he proposed (2) to tax the colonists by requiring "all bills, 



924 FIRST PEEIOD OF TORY RULE [ 



George III. 



bonds, policies of insurance, newspapers, broadsides, and legal 
documents to be written on stamped paper sold in public offices." 
He also proposed (3) to enforce strictly the laws against smug- 
gling.^ No one was surprised more than Grenville himself at the 
reception of his proposals by the colonies. Parliament had long 
been accustomed to regulate colonial port duties. The loyalty of 
the Americans had been abundantly proved by their devotion to 
the common cause in the war which had just closed. The war, 
moreover, had been begun in order to defend the colonies against 
the aggressions of France; and no part of the empire had profited 
more by its successes. The Stamp Act, however, had raised a 
question which was by no means new in the colonies: What right 
had the distant British parliament, a body in which Americans 
were not represented, to levy an internal tax upon America with- 
out asking the consent of her people? Here was the crucial point. 
Other grievances were not wanting, but all sank into minor impor- 
tance beside the greater grievance of "taxation without represen- 
tation." 

Before the full significance of Grenville 's measures, however, 

became apparent in England, his ministry had come to an end. 

The immediate cause of his fall was an attempt to 

The 

"Regency exclude the name of the king's mother from a ' 'Eegency 

Rockingham Bill" which had been made necessary by the shadow of 
insanity which was already hanging over the king. The 
House refused to allow the omission, and the king, to get rid of 
the minister whom he could not forgive for the proposed slight 
to his mother, after vainly seeking Pitt's support, in July 1765 
threw himself into the arms of the old Whig ring. The suc- 
cessor of Newcastle was the marquis of Rockingham who was 
selected to head the new ministry, but although he did not favor 
the corrupt methods of the old Whig regime, his conservatism 
denied him the support of the liberal wing of the party, and his 
ministry soon went to pieces. It survived long enough, however, 
to undo some of the mischief caused by his predecessors. It 
persuaded the House to condemn general warrants, although the 
formal bill was rejected by the Lords; it also restored commis- 

' Lee, Source Book, pp. 474, 475. 



1766] THE PITT-GRAFTON MIlSriSTRY 925 

sions to certain officers in the army who were membc3rs of par- 
liament and had been deprived of their commissions by the 
king, because they had not voted to suit him. But most impor- 
tant of all, the Eockingham ministry secured the repeal of the 
Stamp Act, although it left an opening for future trouble in 
the accompanying "Declaratory Act," in which the authority of 
parliament over the colonies in legislation and taxation was formally 
asserted. 

After a year Rockingham was retired and a new ministry 

was formed under the nominal head of Pitt. Much was expected 

of this ministry. The king understood Pitt better 

|1''«, „ ., than in 1760. He saw that Pitt was as hostile to party 

Pitt-Grafton ^ -^ 

ministry, government as himself: that he hated the old Whig 

1766. o ' _ _ » 

oligarchy, and that he really wished to curtail the 
power of the Commons in the interests of a purer administra- 
tion. Pitt, however, stood upon ground where George III. 's nar- 
row mind would not allow him to follow. For Pitt had fully 
grasped the corollaries of the Revolution, the freedom of the press 
and the right of Englishmen to the protection of English laws 
wherever they dwelt under the English flag. Hence Pitt fully 
recognized the significance of rising political consciousness in the 
American colonists, and boldly championed their claims to the 
full privileges of Englishmen. Illness, however, prevented him 
from taking in the administration the active part which belonged 
to him. His dislike of party government, moreover, had led him 
to make U23 his ministry of men chosen from different political fac- 
tions. As Burke described it, it was "a piece of diversified mosaic, 
patriots and courtiers, king's friends and republicans, Whigs and 
Tories, treacherous friends and open enemies; so that it was a 
curious show, but utterly unsafe to touch or stand on." Pitt 
selected for himself the unimportant position of Privy Seal, 
largely because the lighter duties of the office were better fitted 
to the condition of his health; bnt the position brought him into 
the peerage as Earl of Chatham and thus deprived him of much 
of the popular esteem and confidence which had been his in the 
clays when he gloried in the name of "The Great Commoner." 
While he was at home shut up in his room, subject to alternate 



926 FIRST PERIOD OF TORY RULE [georgeIII. 

fits of intense nervous irritation and despondency, the wreck of 
his former self, his ministers were upsetting his most cherished 
schemes. He had denounced the Stamp Act, fought for the 
repeal, and bitterly opposed the Declaratory Act; and yet in 1767 
his Chancellor of the Exchequer, Charles Townshend, turned once 
more to Grenville's plan of taxing America, and procured the 
passage of the "American Duties Bill," an act which imposed a 
series of customs and duties on certain articles imported into 
America, as white lead, painters' colors, paper, and tea. Like the 
Stamp Act, this act was designed not to regulate trade but to 
raise revenue. As with the Stamp Act, in order to justify the 
measure, it was proposed to apply the revenues to the expenses of 
colonial government. The next year the ministry still further 
attempted to show its good will towards the Americans by the 
appointment of a Secretary of State for the colonies. Since the 
reign of William the affairs of the colonies had been left to a 
committee of the Privy Council, known as the "Board of Trade 
and Plantation." This committee, however, had no standing in 
the ministry proper, and in the pressure of many things, the 
colonies had been left pretty much to themselves. Grenville's 
unfortunate attempt to do something for the colonies, it is said, 
was due to the fact that he insisted on reading the mail from 
America. 

In the general election of 1768, Wilkes, who had recently 
returned from France, again came to the surface as a popular 

agitator, demanding a reform, of the entire parliamen- 
^atii^ tary representative system. There was certainly ground 

enough for Wilkes's contention that the new and grow- 
ing towns of the north and west should be represented. It was 
further estimated that in the whole population of 8,000,000, there 
were not 160,000 men who possessed the franchise. Many 
boroughs were virtually owned by individual families and were 
treated as a part of the family estates. The only way by which 
parliament could be freed from its thraldom to the crown, or from 
the corrupt practices of the borough owners, was to enlarge the 
franchise. It was unfortunate that so good a cause had so base a 
champion. 



1768] ST. George's fields 927 

Wilkes was returned by the voters of Middlesex. On the first 
day of the session, April 37, 1768, he gave himself up to the Court 

of Kings Bench and, being refused bail, was sent to 
¥ie?ds^^^^'^ prison while the question of outlawry was argued. A 

deeply interested crowd of people gathered in St. 
George's Fields outside the prison walls. Lord Weymouth, the Sec- 
retary of State, apprehending an attack by the mob, sent word to 
the Scotch regiment in charge of the prison to fire on the crowds 
in order to disperse them. Five or six people were killed and a 
number wounded. Wilkes, who lay helpless within the prison 
while his friends were shot down outside, vented his wrath by 
sending to the St. James Chronicle a copy of Weymouth's direc- 
tions to the troops with some scathing comments of his own, in 
which he referred to the results of Weymouth's work as "the 
horrid massacre of St. George's Fields." The whole affair did 
not tend to increase the favor with which the government 
regarded Wilkes, and when on June 8, Chief Justice Mansfield 
reversed the sentence of outlawry as illegal, and released the 
prisoner, it was only that he might commit him again on the 
original charge of libel, and sentence him to twenty-two months' 
imprisonment and a fine of £1,000. 

The king, in the meanwhile, supported by parliament renewed 
his efforts against Wilkes with increased vindictiveness. The Lords 

saw fit to construe the letter to St. James Chronicle as 

RcixcivqI of 

attack OH "a scditious libel," and called upon the Commons to 

Wilkes. 

unite with them in punishing the demagogue. The 
Commons responded by once more expelling Wilkes and adding to 
the old charges, the new one of a libelous attack upon the Secre- 
tary of State, the enormity of which was increased, since at the time 
of the offense Wilkes was under sentence of the court. The 
electors of Middlesex replied by reelecting Wilkes. The next 
day, upon the ground that a condemned man could not be eligible, 
the Commons declared the election void. A third election was 
then held in which Wilkes received 1,143 votes, and his opponent. 
Colonel Luttrell, only 296 votes. The Commons awarded the seat 
to Luttrell. 

Whatever may have been the Justice of the original case against 



928 FIRST PERIOD OF TORY RULE [ 



George III. 



Wilkes, the Commons were now palpably in the wrong. Vigorous 

champions, also, who saw that beyond Wilkes the really great cause 

of the right of constituencies to choose their own rep- 

Agitation in . -it 

behalf of resentatives was at stake, rose to sustain the dema- 
The ''Junius ffoffue. Among them were Burke and Grenville, but 

letters." . . 

most, the mysterious satirist who masqueraded under 
the name of "Junius," who during all the year 1769 kept assail- 
ing the king and his ministers, painting in darkest colors the 
prevailing corruption and weakness of the government, and rousing 
his victims to fury by his merciless castigations.^ A series of libel 
prosecutions followed; but the secret of Junius 's identity was so 
well kept that to this day the authorship of the mysterious letters is 
not certain, although it is now generally ascribed to Sir Phili|) 
Francis, who became prominent in the later attacks on Warren 
Hastings. The people were deeply moved, and monster petitions 
were sent up to parliament from different parts of the kingdom; 
one from Yorkshire, presented by Rockingham, was said to con- 
tain the names of 10,000 freeholders. Loudon made Wilkes an 
alderman, and about the same time he won his long delayed suit 
against Halifax, in which he secured a verdict of £4,000. 

The government had won technically, but its vindictive injus- 
tice had called English radicalism into being, and parliament 

although responsible only to a very limited constit- 
of agitation uency, yet saw itself compelled to face an awakened 
mentary public opinion that voiced itself in monster petitions, 

througli the press, and from the platform. From 1769, 
a memorable date, until the outbreak of the French Eevolution, 
the demand of the nation for parliamentary reform steadily in- 
creased in seriousness and persistence. 

In the meanwhile the Chatham ministry from which so much 
had been expected was rapidly going to pieces. In September 

1767 Townshend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, 
ChatiiJm^ died and was succeeded by Lord North. Other mem- 
ministry mo ^®^'^ resigned, and their places were filled by new men. 

In October 1768 Chatham, the nominal head of the 
ministry, disgusted with the attitude of his ministers toward 

' Colby, Selections, etc. , p. 256. 



1770] LOKD ISrORTH 929 

the stirring questions of the hour, also resigned, and committed 
himself to the cause of parliamentary reform. Grafton, his suc- 
cessor, managed to keep things going for two years longer, when he 
too resigned, to give way to Lord North. 

In Lord North the king found a minister after his own heart. 
He is described as a "coarse and clumsy looking man, near- 
sighted, with a wide mouth, thick lips, and inflated 
Lord North, visage;" yet he had a sunny disposition, an unruffled 
temper, tact, and wit. He possessed, also, with much 
ability a large exjjerience in the affairs of government, nor were 
the many disasters which are associated with the twelve years of 
his administration, due to lack of judgment on the part of the 
minister, as much as to the persistent interference of the king, 
with which North in his easy-going good nature only too readily 
acquiesced. For he accepted without reserve the principle that 
as the king's appointee, he belonged to the king, and that he 
was bound to carry out the king's policy rather than his own or 
that of any party. He allowed the king to interfere in all 
home, foreign, and colonial affairs and to direct the policy of the 
cabinet about as he pleased, while his colleagues conducted them- 
selves simply as heads of dejDartments, sticking to their desks, 
and doing their best to carry out the king's wishes. 

During the long era of the North ministry English politics 
were concentrated chiefly on the important constitutional issues 
which had grown out of the Wilkes case and the situa- 
r^o%is ^^^^ ^^^ America. The policy of the party of reform 

gradually shaped itself into a definite demand for the 
curtailment of the privileges of the Commons, and for more direct 
responsibility to their constituents. Grenville in 1770, Just before 
his death, introduced a measure which transferred the decision of 
disputed election cases to a special committee of thirteen, which 
examined witnesses under oath and swore to decide according to 
evidence. His plan remained in force until 1868 when the parlia- 
ment once more returned to the practice of the fourteenth century 
and relegated the settlement of disputed elections to the courts. 
Another measure, which swept away a vast amount of fraud, 
denied the right of servants of members of the House, to share in 



930 PIRST PERIOD OF TORY RULE [ 



George III. 



the privilege of immunity from arrest. A ruling of Justice 

Mansfield in one of Wilkes's libel trials, in which he had allowed 

the Jury to pass upon the fact of publication only, and had 

Libel Act," reserved to the iudge the right to determine the libel- 

1792. e) o o 

ous character of the published matter, remained in 

force until the law of libel was amended by the "Fox Act" in 1792. 

In 1771 Wilkes took a prominent part in defeating an attempt of 

the Commons to punish a London printer named Miller, who had 

recently begun to publish the reports of their debates. In their 

efforts to arrest Miller the Commons became embroiled with the 

authorities of London. The arrest of the mayor, Brass Crosby, 

was the signal for the outbreak of riots; mobs paraded the streets, 

and the Commons in alarm at the storm which their efforts to 

arrest a simple printer had raised, quietly receded from their 

position. Since then the right of the public to know what is 

doing in parliament has been tacitly conceded. 

There were other measures, also, of a different character 

which reflect the times in another light. In 1773 North 

secured the passage of the "Royal Marriage Act" 
The ''Royal , „ , , ^ •, 

Marriage by which a member of the royal family must secure 

the king's consent before contracting a legal mar- 
riage. The act is still law. 

In 1773 the East India Company had fallen into dire straits. 
Bengal had been desolated by a famine that was followed by the 

usual pestilence. Half the population, it was said, 
lating Act," perished. Madras, also, was devastated by wars hardly 
Death of less disastrous; the funds of the company were so 

reduced that they were forced to appeal to parliament 
for relief. A committee of inquiry was appointed which took up 
the subject of Indian administration, and ujDon the basis of their 
work North presented the famous "Regulating Act," which was 
to have such dire consequences in another part of the British 
Empire. By this act the company were allowed to export their 
bonded tea direct to America free of the ordinary English duties, 
but subject to a slight duty at the American ports. He also 
granted the company the loan of £1,000,000, but took out of 
their hands a part of their political authority by establishing a 



1774-1780] THE GORDOlSr EIOTS 931 

supreme court, appointing through parliament a new council, and 
making the governor of Bengal Governor- General of India. War- 
ren Hastings under this law became the first Governor-General of 
India. In the discussions which attended the passage of the 
Eegulating Act, Cli^e, who had been raised to the peerage, 
came in for a full share of censure on the basis of the alleged 
corruption which had attended his administration in the East, 
and although the formal act of censure was softened by a formal 
recognition of his "great and meritorious service" to England, 
the condemnation of the House so preyed upon his mind, that 
he broke under the strain and soon after took his life with his 
own hand, November 22, 1774, dying at the age of forty-nine. 

The position of the Catholics in England early demanded the 
attention of government. The sentiment of toleration was stead- 
ily growing; moreover the old conditions which had 
EiotH^%8o^^ given birth to the existing code had changed, and to 
many statesmen it seemed that the time had come to 
lighten the burdens of their oppressed fellow countrymen. In 
1778 Sir George Saville introduced the "Relief Act". for the 
repeal of the act of 1700 which had forbidden the celebration of the 
mass under severe penalties and had debarred Catholics from 
acquiring a title to land, save by descent. Saville's bill passed 
without serious opposition, but in the next session a proposal to 
apply a similar measure to Scotland at once aroused all the latent 
traditional hostility of the Scots to the Catholics, and rapidly 
developed a vigorous opposition, culminating in a series of riots, 
in which Catholics and the Protestants who favored toleration 
were the victims. The agitation spread to England where it 
found a leader in the young and fanatical Lord George Gordon. 
On Friday June 2, 1780 a crowd of 60,000 people gathered about 
the Parliament House with a petition for the repeal of the Relief 
Act, and when parliament showed no disposition to comply, with 
cries of "No Popery" turned to the looting and burning of pub- 
lic and private buildings. Jails were destroyed and criminals 
liberated. The city authorities were helpless, and for several days 
the city lay at the mercy of the mob. Wilkes, who was now an 
alderman of London and had a considerable following among the 



932 ' FIRST PERIOD OP TORY RULE [ 



George III. 



people, proved so useful in suppressing the disturbance that the 
Privy Council thanked him formally. The demonstrations failed 
altogether to force the repeal and in the end really strengthened 
the cause of toleration. 

During this period two men had come into special prominence, 
Edmund Burke and Charles James Fox. Burke was born in Ire- 
land in 1739. His father was a Protestant attorney 
BwrkT'^ of prominence and his mother a Catholic. He attended 
Dublin University, but met with indifferent success as 
a student, taking little interest in the prescribed studies. He 
studied law but disliking it, chose the uncertain profession 
of letters. His father in disgust withdrew his allowance. The 
act of the father was the making of the young man, who was 
thus thrown upon his own resources and compelled to grapple 
with life in serious earnest. He began by practicing oratory in 
the debating societies of Convent Garden and by writing for book- 
sellers. He did not enter the political arena until nearly forty; 
"I was not swaddled and rocked and dandled into a legislator," 
he wrote just before his death. In the House he was at once 
recognized as a man of power. Inferior to Fox as a debater and 
surpassed by Pitt in fire and majesty of declamation, he excelled 
all in correctness of diction, in range of knowledge, in power of 
imagination, and in depth of philosophical reflection. There was 
apparently no limit to his power of applying himself long and 
arduously to any matter which he took in hand. He spent 
fourteen years in the effort to master the affairs of India, and suc- 
ceeded after "laborious effort in laying the foundations, once and 
for all, of a moral, jnst, philanthropic, and responsible public 
opinion in England with reference to India, and in doing so per- 
formed perhaps the most magnificent service that any statesman 
has ever had it in his power to render to humanity." 

The accession of Charles James Fox to the Whig party was 
mainly due to the teaching and influence of Burke. Fox entered 
parliament in 1768 before he was legally qualified, not having com- 
pleted his twentieth year. He had accepted his politics from his 
father, the Henry Fox of George II. 's time, and accordingly had 
first joined the Tory ranks. The story of his private life is 



1770-1774] THE BOSTOlSr MASSACRE 933 

highly discreditable. Gaming was a passion which, notwithstand- 
ing a large inheritance and the repeated assistance of friends, kept 

him in a state of chronic bankruptcy. He drank; he 
james^Fox ^^^ profligate ; yet he possessed a charm of manner, a 

sweetness of temper, which endeared him to his friends 
and evoked the admiration of his opponents. "He is a man," said 
Burke, "made to be loved, of the most artless, candid, open, and 
benevolent disposition; disinterested in the extreme, of a temper 
mild and placable to a fault, without one drop of gall in his whole 
constitution." He was dismissed from the Tory ministry in 1774 
as the result of a personal quarrel with Lord North, and 
although he did not ally himself at once with the Whigs, he began 
to attack the policy of the government toward America. 

While the better elements within parliament and without, were 
thundering away at the corruption of North's administration, the 

situation in America was every day becoming more crit- 
MaHsacre"'^ ical. The Spirit of resistance, which had subsided for 
March 5, g^ season after the repeal of the Stamp Act, was blazing 

up again more fiercely than ever. The colonial gov- 
ernors were constantly quarreling with the colonial legislatures; 
and when parliament proposed to bring to England for trial men 
accused of treason, whom colonial juries refused to convict, the 
colonists answered by a sort of boycott of English merchants, 
such as they had attempted after the passage of the Stamp Act, 
agreeing not to import or use English goods. The soldiers 
quartered in America were also a source of constant friction, and 
finally came into open conflict with a mob of men and boys in the 
streets of Boston. Several of the mob were shot down. The first 
to fall was Crispus Attucks, a colored man. 

Even Lord North hesitated to push matters further, and deter- 
mining to try conciliation, repealed the duties of Townshend, 

except that on tea, and allowed the act by which 
fondMation ^o^cliers were quartered on the colonists to expire. 

The government pledged itself, also, to raise no further 
revenues in America. These measures for a time promised to 
improve the situation; but the underlying causes of discontent 
remained. Occasional outbreaks of lawlessness, the attitude of 



934 FIRST PERIOD OP TORY RULE [geobge ill. 

the resident representatives of the crown toward their fellow col- 
onists, the treatment of Franklin who was the accredited agent of 
several of the colonies at the English court, kept the public mind 

irritated and fanned the growing spirit of opposition. 
TeaPaHij." The American tea duty had been retained, partly to 

assert the right of the British government to tax the 
colonies, and partly because it was more of the nature of a trade 
regulation and did not affect English manufactures. The colo- 
nists, however, refused to use the tea. The removal of the English 
export duty of 12 cents per pound in the interest of the East India 
Company still further complicated matters, by threatening every 
small merchant who had already bought his tea. When the tea 
ships arrived, for the most part, they were sent back with their 
holds unopened. Some, however, did not get off so easily; in 
Boston a company of citizens, disguised as Indians, boarded the 
vessels and threw their entire cargoes into the sea. 

Parliament was naturally exasperated at the untoward results of 
its efforts at conciliation, and responded to the act of the citizens 

of Boston by a series of measures known in America as 

The ^^Ifttolcr- 

able Acts," the "Intolerable Acts." The harbor of Boston was 

1774. 

closed, a severe blow to the prosperity of the contuma- 
cious city; the charter of Massachusetts was remodeled so as to 
place the powers of government largely in the hands of the crown 
and its appointees; the right of the people to hold public meet- 
ings was abridged. It was provided, also, that any one indicted for 
murder or any capital offense, committed while aiding a magistrate 
to suppress disturbances, might be sent for trial to any other 
colony or to Great Britain. General Gage was appointed military 
Governor of Massachusetts and empowered to quarter soldiers 
upon the inhabitants. 

The attack upon Boston at once roused the sympathies of the 
other colonies. Although Boston had first drawn the wrath of 
parliament, all felt that the cause was common. The old rivals 
of Boston, Salem and Marblehead, offered the Boston merchants 
the use of their wharves and warehouses without cost. Other places 
sent supplies of rice and corn to feed the Boston poor. Virginia 
sent resolutions of sympathy and other colonies imitated her exam- 



1774] FIRST AMERICAN CONGRESS 935 

i 

pie. A system of committees organized resistance, and a "Solemn 

League and Coyenant" was formed by which the colonies bound 

themselves to have no commercial intercourse with 

The First Great Britain until the uniust acts were withdrawn. 
Continental «' 

Congress, ^ movement for a general Congress was set on foot, and 
on September 5, 1774, delegates met at Philadelphia, 
representing every colony except distant Georgia. They drew 
up a series of addresses to the colonies, to the Canadians, and 
to the king and people of England. They also framed a decla- 
ration of rights setting forth the points at issue in a clear and 
statesmanlike manner. They had no wish to separate from the 
mother country ; they acknowledged the general legislative author- 
ity of parliament and its right to impose such commercial regula- 
tions as might be deemed for the best good of the empire. But 
rather than submit to taxation by parliament, or to acts which 
violated their liberties, they would appeal to the sword. They 
adjourned to meet in the following May to consider the king's 
reply to the address and determine upon the next step. 

The colonists were now rapidly drifting into the War of the 
Eevolution. "The die is now cast," wrote George III.; "the 
colonists must either submit or triumph." The Eng- 
c'ouiiseis lish officials who surrounded the king laughed at the 

idea of resisting a British army. They remembered the 
dissensions and jealousies which had crippled the colonists at the 
outbreak of the last war and did not believe them capable of any 
continued concerted action. "The Americans will be lions while 
we are lambs," General Gage assured the king; "but if we take 
the resolute part, they will undoubtedly prove very meek." 
Some, however, saw with a clearer eye the serious nature of the 
impending conflict. Burke and Chatham recognized the sound- 
ness of the principle upon which the colonists had taken their 
stand, and boldly raised their voices for the cause of liberty. 
These colonists were Englishmen and were entitled to the rights 
of Englishmen ; the fact that they had been cradled in America 
did not justify parliament in withholding these rights. "I rejoice 
that America has resisted," Chatham cried. "Three millions of 
people, so dead to all the feelings of liberty as voluntarily to sub- 



936 PIRST PERIOD OF TORY RULE [ George UI. 

mit to be slaves, would have been fit instruments to make slaves 
of the rest." He moved an address to the kiug, praying him to 
remove the British troops as soon as possible, as the first step 
towards "a happy settlement of the dangerous troubles in 
America."^ Other measures of conciliation were proposed, but 
before parliament could make up its mind to act, the war had 
begun. 

On the night of April 18, 1775, General Gage sent out the 
unfortunate expedition to destroy the stores at Concord that 
resulted in the battle on the green in the quiet village 
Lextmfon'^'^ of Lexington; a small band of farmers and mechan- 
ics, who had hurried from their plows and their forges 
at the first alarm, stood for one moment to face the British regu- 
lars and then fled. They left sixteen of their number lying on 
the green behind them, some shot to death and others writhing in 
the agony of ghastly wounds. It was not a battle, hardly a skir- 
mish, but it was enough to call the young nation to arms. The 
whole countryside rose, and when the English, after accomplish- 
ing their task, began the homeward march from Concord, from all 
sides the infuriated farmers began pouring in a deadly fire upon 
the retiring columns. From barns, from haystacks, from hedges, 
from stonewalls, they kept up an incessant fire, and nothing but 
the approach of a relief party of nine hundred men saved the 
detachment from complete annihilation. 

The news of the day's fighting spread rapidly, and from all 
eastern Massachusetts the hardy yeomanry began to pour into the 
improvised camps about Boston, and Gage found him- 
5im?i7 i775' ^^^^ compelled to face a regular siege. On the 17th of 
June the insurgents attempted to fortify the peninsula 
which stretches around Boston harbor to the left. The result 
was the action known as the Battle of Bunker Hill. Fifteen 
hundred inexperienced troops, after toiling all night to cast up 
intrenchments, found themselves in the morning, weary with toil 
and faint for lack of food, exposed to a galling fire from the Eng- 
lish ships, and then compelled to face a direct attack of the 
English infantry. Boldly they stood their ground; twice they 

* Lee, Source Book, p. 479. 



1776] AMERICAN DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 937 

scattered the English columns and drove them dovv^n the slope; 
and then, when their powder was gone, they faced the advancing 
regulars with stones and clubbed guns, and retired only at the 
point of the bayonet. Under the conditions the attempt to fortify 
and hold such a position would be condemned by all the rules of 
war and the brave fellows were severely punished for their temerity, 
or, rather, their ignorance of the military science. Yet the act 
had most important results. The Americans had proved that they 
were not the cowardly, raw yokels who would throw down their 
guns and run at the first smell of powder, such as English officials 
had so often represented. The prestige of the English army was 
shaken and its morale weakened. 

The battle of Bunker Hill, also, greatly strengthened the war 
spirit in the colonies. The second Continental Congress had 

met as agreed in May. They had come together osten- 
'contfnentai ^^^^J ^^ ^ peace convention ; but found themselves com- 
Cmvgress, pelled to assume the functions of a governing body and 

shoulder the responsibility of conducting a war. Yet 
they bravely faced the issue. On June 15, 1775 they appointed 
George Washington, who had seen severe service in Braddock's 
ill-fated campaign, commander-in-chief of the colonial armies, 
and at once inaugurated a series of vigorous measures for making 
the military strength of the colonies felt by England. Ticonderoga 
and Crown Point, the gateway to Canada, were surprised and cap- 
tured. And though an invasion of Canada failed, it was more 
than counterbalanced by the success of Washington in compell- 
ing Gage's successor Howe to evacuate Boston in March, 1776. 
These events had powerfully accelerated the drift of Amer- 
ican opinion toward independence. When the first Congress 

came together few thought of independence as either 
tton^/ii^de^' possible or desirable. The colonies instructed the 
^juUiTme ^i^legates, while securing the redress of grievances, to 

labor, as Massachusetts put it, for "the restoration of 
union and harmony between Great Britain and the colonies, most 
ardently desired by all good men. ' ' But the lingering loyalty of 
the people was fast ebbing under the pressure of the contest ; and 
when the king, unable to persuade Englishmen to enlist in the 



938 FIKST PERIOD OF TORY RULE [george II3. 

nefarious war which his OAvn stupidity had raised, began to buy 
up Hessian peasants and ship them to America in order to shoot 
down Americans, there was no place longer for old fashioned 
loyalty. Nor was all the indignation felt by Englishmen on this 
side the water. Cliatham, never more terrible to those who were 
sinning against liberty than in these later days, rose from his sick 
bed to hobble into the old hall which he had so long honored by 
his noble championship of the cause of the Greater Britain and 
with almost his last breath protested against the suicidal course 
of the government. "You cannot conquer America," he cried; 
"if I were an American as I am an Englishman, while a foreign 
troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms, 
never, never never!" In America the rising indignation swept 
all before it, and on the night of July 4, 1776, amidst the most 
intense anxiety, the Continental Congress gave the memorable 
Declaration of Independence to the world. 

The months which followed were marked by varying fortunes 
on either side, until the victory of the Americans at Saratoga 
effectually turned the tide. Congress, through its 
October'ii ^-ge^t Silas Deane, had already secured material aid 
Iter mWs from France in money, arms, and equipment; but the 
disaster to the English arms at Saratoga encouraged 
the French government to make a treaty of alliance with the 
colonists by which they were recognized as independent states, and 
England was forced to begin war with France. In 1779 Spain also 
declared war on Great Britain, and in 1780 the northern powers 
entered into an "armed neutrality" to resist England's assumption 
of the right of search. England thus saw herself not only baffled in 
her attempts to reduce the colonies, but seriously menaced by the 
general attitude of the European powers, from Russia to Spain. 

The situation of England was now extremely critical. Northern 
Europe was hostile and war had actually begun with Holland. The 

French navy, which had been enlarged and strengthened 

Fresh dm- . T . v^-T • -^1^ ^-u \ ^ t 

cuUiesfor by Louis X V 1. , was proving itseli more than a match tor 

England on the seas. Ireland, which was in a far worse 

condition politically and commercially than the colonies had ever 

been, was also on the verge of revolt. Five-sixths of the popula- 



1781] END OF AMERICAN WAR 939 

tion were Cafcliolic. Of the remaining one-sixtli the Presbyterian 
settlers of Ulster formed one-half, but were as completely 
excluded from participation in the government as were the 
Catholics. Only members of the Established Church were allowed 
to share in the administration of government or of justice, and 
even this handful of the population were controlled by a few 
wealthy and corrupt landowners. The Irish parliament was the 
mouthpiece of the Privy Council in England; English laws had 
long since destroyed Irish commerce and agriculture in 
aaitation ^^® interests of English merchants and landlords. Yet 
the new movement which now shook Ireland was not 
inspired by the suffering and poyerty of the misgoverned ma- 
jority, but by the ruling class who believed that the time had come 
to demand legislative independence. It was sustained, moreover, 
by the eloquence of Grattan and Flood in parliament and by an 
armed force of 80,000 volunteers whom the English government 
had called out to provide defense for Ireland under threat of a 
French invasion. It was no time to think of resistance, and 
Lord North, taught at last by his experience with the Amer- 
ican colonies, yielded and the burdensome restrictions under 
which Irish commerce had struggled for a hundred years, 
were removed. The succeeding ministry abandoned the English 
claim to legislative and judicial supremacy, and for eighteen 
years Ireland enjoyed a kind of Home Eule. The government, 
however, was still conducted in the interests of the Protestant 
minority. 

In 1781, when Cornwallis, who had been shut up in Yorktown 
by a combined American and French force, was at last compelled to 

surreiider, the climax was reached in the American 
End of the 

American struggle. When the news reached England, Lord 

war. & ' 

North abandoned all hope of a successful termination 

of the war; "Oh God," he cried, "it is all over." The unhappy 
minister had attempted to resign before, but the king had con- 
tinued to cling to him with the persistent obstinacy which had 
already brought so much misfortune in its train; and even now he 
would have prolonged the struggle, but the sentiment of the 
country had set so strongly against North, that George was forced 



940 PIRST PERIOD OF TORY RULE [geobgbIU. 

at last to yield, and on March 20, 1782 the North ministry came 

to an end. The same bitter alternative compelled the king to 

accept a Whig ministry, though it implied the over- 

North. Sec- tlirow of the system which he had been so long striving 

ham minis- to build up. Eockingham again became the head of 
try 1782. a o 

the administration with Fox and William Petty, Lord 

Shelburne, leader of the Chatham Whigs, as the most important 
members. The avowed purpose of the ministry was to secure 
peace on the basis of the independence of the American colonies. 
But the ministry was weakened by dissensions. The king 
intrigued with Shelburne against the other members. Shelburne, 
who disliked Fox personally, wished to take up Walpole's old 
policy of alliance with France, delaying peace with America till 
France could be included in its terms. Fox wished England to 
join in a defensive alliance with Eussia and Prussia, and favored 
an immediate peace with America. After fifteen weeks of fruit- 
less discussion Eockingham died. He was succeeded by 

The 

SheJp^mie Shelburne; Fox, Burke, and Ashburton withdrew. At 

the same time the negotiations for peace received a favor- 
able impulse from a victory which Eodney won over de Grasse in the 
West Indies, and also from the failure of a combined French and 
Spanish attack on Gibraltar, the culmination of a three years' siege. 
France and Spain were convinced that England might still prove a 
dangerous enemy, and in January 1783 agreed to preliminaries 
at Versailles. Similar articles had been accepted by Great Britain 
and the United States in the preceding November, and on Septem- 
ber 3, 1783, formal treaties between Great Britain, the 
Pertceo/ United States, France, and Spain, were signed at Paris 

and Versailles. Great Britain ceded to France Tobago 
in the West Indies, and the Senegal region in Africa; Spain 
retained Minorca and Florida; the independence of the United 
States was recognized and the boundaries of the new nation were 
established. Though England had regained her control of the 
sea, the loss of her American colonies was a heavy blow and 
seemed to many even of her own people to have deprived her of 
her position as a great world power. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE SECOND PERIOD OP TORT RULE AND THE FRENCH 
REVOLUTION 

GEORGE III., 17S3-1815 

For twelve years George III. had now been king after his own 

ideal, he had not only reigned, he liad governed. The results, 

however, were by no means such as to commend a 

PCT'SOTiCtl/ 

rule of king further trial of the experiment. The crown had lost 
one-half its territories; its hold upon Ireland and India 
had been seriously threatened, if not weakened ; England had been 
humbled before her old traditional foes in Europe, and her public 
debt had been increased to £250,000,000. Even North, who had 
so often sacrificed his own Judgment in supporting the Tory idea of 
king government, now went over to the "king's enemies," openly 
declaring that henceforth the appearance of power was all that 
was left for a king of England. King-power in England was 
dead. The decree of Fox, that the king must never again be 
allowed to be his own Prime Minister, "was accepted as final ; the 
government by departments was tacitly abandoned and the cabinet 
system of Walpole accepted as a permanent feature of the unwrit- 
ten constitution. 

The tenure of the new Whig ministry, however, was destined 

to be short. Fox, Burke, and Ashburton, who had resigned when 

Lord Shelburne became Prime Minister, now ioined 

The Whig 

ministry, forcGs with the North Tories, and in February succeeded 

1782 1783 

in forcing Shelburne out of office. The Whigs had been 
in office barely ten months; yet they had undone much of the 
mischief wrought by the George III. -North ministry. They had 
accepted the results of the American War and made peace with 
the United Colonies and their allies ; they had quieted Ireland by 
granting legislative and judicial independence; they had also done 

941 



942 SECOND PERIOD OE TORY RULE [georgbIII. 

tardy justice to Wilkes by expunging the proceedings of the Mid- 
dlesex election case. During the twelve hungry years of opposi- 
tion, the party cry had been for economic and parliamentary 
reform, and the Whig ministers had signalized their return to 
power by cutting away many of the barnacles that had fastened 
upon the public service as a result of George III.'s personal 
methods of winning "friends;" they had debarred revenue ofhcers 
from voting at parliamentary elections and secured the exclusion 
of government contractors from the House of Commons ; they had. 
restricted the regular pension list and abolished secret pensions 
and useless offices. Yet when the reform ministers hastened to 
give pensions to their friends in order to make the most of the 
old system before the new pension law should come into opera- 
tion, it was evident to the people that the politicians, true to the 
traditions of the gild, were only playing at reform as a bid for 
popular favor. It was something, however, that politicians were 
beginning to fear the public pillory and that they recognized the 
necessity of at least seeming to be honest. 

Any feelings of disappointment which the public may have 

felt with the conduct of the Whig ministry were soon forgotten 

in the positive shock which followed the announcement 

The Fox- of a coalition of the high-toned Fox Whigs and the 

North coali- 

tion, 1783. North Tories under the nominal leadership of the duke 
of Portland, but with Fox and North as Secretaries of 
State. The new ministers cited the precedent of the Pitt-New- 
castle coalition, and appealed to the present necessity of uniting 
all factions to save the state. The people refused to believe that 
two such bitter political foes as Fox and North, who for twelve 
years back had filled the air with the din of personal recrimina- 
tion, had joined hands for any other purpose than to keep them- 
selves in power and more securely control public patronage. The 
new coalition ministry, therefore, though for the time strong in 
the Commons, began its career under a cloud of popular disfavor. 
The king, moreover, was against it. He had always detested 
Fox, and would not forgive North for his recent desertion. He 
had for five weeks struggled for his right to select his own minis- 
ters, but had been compelled at last to accept the men who com- 



i 



1783] WILLIAM PITT THE SECOND 943 

manded the votes of parliament. He fretted and worried under 
what he called liis "thraldom," and told the new ministers to the 
face that they need never expect his support. This was no idle 
threat, for the king still retained a considerable personal influence, 
particularly in the House of Lords, and upon the presentation of 
Fox's "India Bill," secured its defeat in the Lords, and taking 
advantage of the increasing disfavor of the coalition, on December 
18 ordered Fox and North to deliver up their portfolios. 

The bill itself was not objectionable. The East India Com- 
pany as a result of the powers originally conferred upon it, 
had developed tyranny in its worst form, that of an 
^[iidia BUI " irresponsible private corporation which exercised all the 
power of a sovereign state, maintaining armies, making 
treaties of peace or levying war, and disposing of the jDroperty 
and lives of millions of hel23less subjects, without other object 
than the enrichment of the distant stockholders at home. Men 
like Burke who had much to do with framing the Fox Bill, had 
felt deeply the wrongs under which the East Indians suffered, 
and saw no hope of improving their condition until the political 
powers of the company were put in the hands of commissioners 
responsible to parliament. But the public refused to believe in 
the sincerity of Fox's philanthropy, and saw in the measure only 
one more scheme to increase enormously the patronage which was 
already at the disposal of the coalition. Hence the Indians had 
to wait until a champion should present himself whose hands were 
clean. 

The great Chatham had died in 1778 in the midst of the 
American War, his last speech a protest against "the dismember- 
ment of this ancient and most noble monarchy." 
the^second^^^ When his speech was ended he fell back in a fit, and 
was carried home to die a few days later. May 11. His 
eldest son, who bore his title, was a man of second-rate powers, 
but the younger son, born in 1759, who bore the father's name, had 
inherited not only his high-souled integrity but much of his power 
as a leader, although without his fire. From childhood the 
younger Pitt had been trained by his august father for public life. 
Under such tutelage the susceptible mind matured fast and the 



944 SECON"D PERIOD OF TORY RULE [gbobqe hi. 

youth soon developed remarkable powers as a debater and leader. 
He was scarcely out of his teens when he first entered parlia- 
ment, and soon became prominent as an earnest advocate of 
parliamentary reform. When Fox resigned from the Shelburne 
ministry in 1782, Pitt, althongh then but twenty-three, was 
appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer, and now, a year later, npon 
the fall of the coalition he was invited by the king to form a new 
ministry. 

The appointment was greeted by the hoary-headed politi- 
cians with shouts of derisive laughter. The new government was 

dubbed "the mince pie administration;" it was made 
strength of Iq Iqq devoured before the Christmas holidays were over. 

The king, it was said, had entrusted the empire to "a 
schoolboy, who ought to be sent back to school." Yet for 
seventeen years this schoolboy was to maintain his place at the 
head of the government, and carry England safely through one of 
the most trying periods of her whole history. Derision soon 
turned to admiration; "He is not a chip of the old block," 
exclaimed Burke, when he had learned the worth of the man, 
"he is the old block itself . " Here in a word was the secret of 
the phenomenal career of this precocious youth. He was his 
father's successor in more ways than one; he had succeeded not 
only to his name and much of his ability, but with a tact and 
business knowledge of his own, he had also fallen heir to his 
father's popularity. All the glorious traditions associated with 
the career of the father, his championship of parliamentary 
reform, of the rights of Britons, of the dignity of the crown 
against the rule of the old Whig oligarchy, and of the integrity 
and dignity of the British empire, all now passed to William Pitt 
the younger. 

In the appointment of Pitt, the king apparently had reasserted 
the outworn Tory doctrine of his right to name his own minister 

in spite of the opposition of the Commons, and for the 
^'dPuf moment the popularity of the new minister made the 

elevation of Pitt appear like a real triumph of the king. 
But George soon found that in Pitt he had no such pliant servant 
as in North; William Pitt and not Georsre III. was now Prime 



1784] APPEAL OF PITT TO THE COUNTRY 945 

Minister of England. Yet loath as George was to give up his old 
ideas of personal government, he was compelled to cling to Pitt. 
It was, moreover, the wisest thing to do; for it brought the nation 
to the support of the king against the parliarnent, and matched 
the coalition of Whig and Tory politicians by a counter coalition 
of king and people ; and king and people won. 

For some months Pitt's position was precarious. The coalition 
fully expected shortly to return to power. Pitt could not per- 
suade a single member of influence in the Commons to 
Pitt to the ^^^ ^^^^^^ ^^^ cabinet, and was compelled to take his minis- 
country, -^gj-g from the Lords. In the Commons he stood almost 

1784. 

alone, — a young man of twenty-foar confronted by such 
leaders as Fox, North, Burke, Sheridan, and Erskine. Again 
and again he was defeated by large majorities, yet he would not 
resign. With the support of the king he might appeal to the 
nation, but the temper of the people was not yet assured, and 
the young minister hesitated to commit his cause to a jaopular 
election without something more definite than a mere personal 
issue. Here, however. Fox unintentionally came to his support. 
Fox feared a dissolution, and in order to be beforehand, called in 
question the right of the crown to dissolve parliament without the 
consent of the Commons. The position of Fox at once fur- 
nished the issue for which Pitt waited, and in the spring of 1784 
he determined to appeal to the country. The people saw in the 
opposition of the politicians only a determination to make the 
Commons independent not only of the king but also of the 
nation ; in Pitt they saw the champion of the interests of the 
nation against the politicians, or what in America would be called 
"the ring," or "the machine." The victory of Pitt was over- 
whelming; the opposition lost one hundred and sixty members, 
and Pitt with a free hand addressed himself to the great work of 
restoring the resources of the country wasted by the recent war. 
The Whigs had had their opportunity and had abused it. After 
twelve years of opposition, in which they had made reform the rally- 
ing cry of the party, the nation had taken them at their word and 
placed them in power. But the old instincts of the politician 
had proved too strong for the leaders, and the people in disgust 



946 SECOKD PERIOD OP TOET RULE [georgeHI. 

had hurled them from power, and turned to the young man, who 
with the king and his great name made a party all by himself. 

Pitt now had six years of unbroken peace in which to set his 
house in order. He had posed heretofore as a reformer, but in 

office his enthusiasm for reform gradually gave way to 
The six years the safer maxims of the practical statesman. Among 
1784-1790. his first measures he took up the Indian question, and 

in 1784 proposed a new India Bill, which left the gov- 
ernment and the patronage of the company still in its hands, 
but placed over it a responsible board of control, subject to 
removal by the crown. This arrangement continued in force until 
the abolition of the company in 1858 after the Sepoy Mutiny. 
In 1785 Pitt approached the dangerous question of parliamentary 
reform in the same judicious way. His plan, however, which 
proposed to buy up the rotten boroughs and the exclusive corpor- 
ations in the interests of an extended franchise, met with little 
support from the radical reformers, while the king and Pitt's 
Tory supporters, who were suspicious of all reform measures by 
instinct, also opposed the bill, and it was lost. Pitt, apparently, 
was satisfied that the times were not ripe for parliamentary reform, 
and although it was the cause to which he had first given his 
heart, he now dropped the subject in order to turn to other 
reforms in which he had the support of his party. ^ Here also 
he was not always to have his way. In 1785 he was again defeated 
in a measure which proposed to establish free trade and commer- 
cial equality between Ireland and England. But in 1786 in secur- 
ing a commercial treaty with France, which abolished most of the 
protective duties between the two countries, he was more success- 
ful. In both these measures Pitt was directly influenced by the 
free trade views of Adam Smith, to which he had long since been 
a convert and which he now tried to put into practical operation. 
In 1791 he divided Canada into two provinces and gave the people 
representative institutions. 

^ Pitt in private always called himself a Whig, and yet he was sup- 
ported by the Tories and was appointed to office in defiance of the Whig 
doctrine that a minister should always have the support of parliament. 



1788] TRIAL OF WAEREN HASTIJSTGS 94-7 

It was upon his own office, that of the treasury, that Pitt 
brought his splendid business abilities to bear with the most 

marked results. The legion of sinecure offices con- 
refm-ms"'^ nected with the customs was swept away; the collecting 

of duties was simplified; smuggling, which robbed the 
government annually of u]) wards of two million pounds, was 
discouraged, partly by reducing certain duties and partly by trans- 
ferring others to the excise list; the franking privilege which had 
been grossly abused by members of parliament, was restricted; 
treasurers and paymasters who had been allowed to leave office 
with large accounts unsettled, were brought to book, and the 
entire system of administering the finances was reorganized and 
put on a sound basis. When taunted by Burke with prying into 
holes and corners after "vermin abuses," Pitt declared that he 
would not be justified in omitting "any exertion that might tend 
in the most minute particulars, to promote that economy on 
which the recovery of the state from its present depressed situa- 
tion so much depended. ' ' 

The event, however, about which public interest specially 
centered during the first period of Pitt's administration, was the 

impeachment of Warren Hastings upon the charge of 

TriaJ of . . \ . ^ . ^ to -f . , ■, T . 

Warren high crimcs and misdemeanors connected with his 
Indian administration. He had returned to England 
in 1785 and was almost immediately attacked by his defeated rival, 
Philip Francis, the supposed author of the "Junius" letters, and 
by Burke and Sheridan, The trial began before the House of 
Lords in 1788, and dragged on for seven years, when Hastings, 
embittered in spirit and with diminished fortune, was finally 
acquitted. 

The great moral awakening which had been stirring England 
since the beginning of the careers of Wesley and Whitfield, the 
influence of which had been felt even within the murky 
prison atmosphere of corruption and bribery which surrounded 

the court, was now beginning to make itself felt in two 
very practical directions, — prison reform and opposition to the 
slave trade. The prisons of England in the eighteenth century 
were a reproach to civilization, to say nothing of Christianity. 



948 SECOND PERIOD OF TORY RULE [ 



George III. 



To avoid the window tax, originally imposed in 1696, p-risons had 
been built with little or no light; they were, moreover, always 
overcrowded, filthy, and haunted by contagion. The "Jail fever" 
executed more criminals, it was said, than the hangman. It was 
not unusual for both judge and jury to contract the fever during 
the course of a trial, and atone with their lives for the inhumanity 
of the system of justice which they represented. Jails were let 
upon a sort of contract system, and the jailers sought by means of 
petty persecutions, more or less brutal, to wring the largest pos- 
sible fees from the victims whom justice placed at their mercy. 
The debtor and the hardened criminal, the innocent and the 
guilty, male and female, old and young, were herded together 
without sufficient food, air, or water. Even those who were 
acquitted, or who were discharged by the grand jury, might be 
dragged back to prison and held until they could satisfy the 
monstrous charges of the ogre whom the state had put in charge 
of the jail. 

The public had not been altogether blind to these abuses ; as 
early as 1726 parliament had been forced by certain disclosures 
connected with the Fleet Prison to undertake an inquiry. It does 
not appear, however, that much came of these investigations, 
and it was not until fifty years later that the matter received the 
r , serious consideration which it deserved. In 1773 

Howard. John Howard, a quiet gentleman of Bedfordshire, was 
appointed sheriff of the county. His duties brought him into 
contact with the miseries of the jail population. Inquiry and 
travel soon revealed to him that what was going on at Bedford was 
the common experience of jail life over all the British Islands. 
The man, who up to this moment had been leading the useless 
life of a valetudinarian, had at last found his mission. He hence- 
forth devoted his fortune and his life to the noble purpose of 
confronting England and Europe with the wrongs which society 
daily heaped upon the innocent and helpless. He visited the 
prisons; he went alone and unattended into the pesthouses of 
Constantinople, where he could hire neither physician nor dragoman 
to follow him;' he put himself on board an infected ship bound for 
Venice, that by personal experience he might know the horrors of 



1774-1783] JOHN" HOWARD 949 

the Venetian lazaretto. After twenty-seven years of arduous toil 
and incessant danger he died at last of camp fever in Russia. Of 
him and his work Bentham wrote: "In the scale of moral 
desert the labors of the legislator and the writer are as far below 
his as earth is below heaven. His kingdom was of a better world; 
he died a martyr, after living an apostle." 

In England Howard was very early permitted to see some 
results of his work. In 1774 he was summoned before parlia- 
ment to give testimony upon the condition of the 
form^n^' English jails, and his disclosures had much to do in 
Botam'sav inducing parliament to undertake the reforms which 
followed, chijef of which was the abolition of jailers' fees 
and of the numerous abuses which had sprung of the custom. 
Justices of the peace, also, were required to see that jails were 
kept in a sanitary condition and that proper infirmaries were 
provided for the sick. In 1788, as the result of an effort to secure 
a more healthful location for the English convict colony. Botany 
Bay on the southern coast of Australia was selected, and the first 
load of convict colonists sent out to begin the English possession 
of the continent of the southern seas. Captain Cook had explored 
this coast nearly twenty years before and upon the basis of this 
exploration the English founded a claim to the whole island, 
although it had been long known to Europeans. 

It is not surprising that while the conscience of England was 
thus awakening to its obligations toward the helpless and the 
unfortunate, some mentors should arise to call attention 
Irade"'^^ to the horrors of the African slave trade. Up to the 
third quarter of the century the Quakers had stood 
almost alone in denouncing the traflSc in human fiesb. Wesley, it 
is true, had denounced it; but men like Whitefield favored it, 
and John Newton, long after his conversion to the Evangelical 
faith, continued to command his slaver. . Yet the consciences of 
good people could not rest easy under the accumulating horrors 
of the trade, rumors of which from time to time reached Eng- 
land.* In 1772 Chief Justice Mansfield gave his famous decision 

' In 1783 the master of a slave ship found that his cargo was infected 
with contagion and deliberately threw 132 negroes overboard, because if 



950 SECOND PERIOD OF TORT RULE [georgeIII. 

that a slave brought to England became free. In 1787 the 
"Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade" was formed, the 
leading spirits of which were Thomas Clarksoii and William Wil- 
berforce. In 1788 the Society got a promise of assistance from 
Pitt, and the government made an effort to lessen the horrors of 
the passage from Africa to America by limiting the number of 
negroes which might be carried in a single cargo. The colony of 
Sierra Leone, also, was established in western Africa as a refuge for 
freed slaves. There was too much capital invested in the lucra- 
tive trade, however, to make the victory an easy one. One-half 
the wealth of Liverpool, it was said, came from this source. The 
king and the Tories opposed the reform on principle ; and when 
the French Revolution attacked slavery, the conservative English- 
man who had wavered before, was satisfied; that "the atheists 
and anarchists of France" had abolished slavery was reason suffi- 
cient for upholding the trade in England. Yet men like Clark- 
sou and Wilberforce continued the struggle, and after repeated 
efforts, the trade was finally abolished by the act of 1807. 

In Pitt's foreign policy there was nothing of the "benevolent 
tolerance" which marked his l\andling of these domestic ques- 
tions. The recent partition of Poland had apparently 
Tiicfnrcjgn whetted the appetite of the Russian Catherine II. for 

policy of Pitt. -t ^ 

more plunder of the same kind, and in 1783 she seized 
the Crimea, proposing to destroy Turkey and reestablish a Greek 
Empire, but under Russian control; in the north, also, she was 
threatening Gustavus III. of Sweden. To overawe Russia and 
meet this new menace to the existing balance of the northern 
powers, Pitt proposed an alliance of England, Prussia, and the 
Dutch Netherlands. Frederick, however, could not forget 
Bute's treachery, and as long as Frederick lived any active con- 
cert of England and Prussia was hardly possible. But the death 
of Frederick in 1786 removed the last obstacle, and two years later 
a new Triple Alliance v/as duly formed for the purpose of "pre- 
serving the jDublic tranquillity and security, for maintaining com- 

they died on his hands, the owners would have to bear the loss, but if he 
threw them overboard for safety, the loss would fall on the insurance 
companies. 



1791] PITT AKD THE FKENCH REVOLUTION 951 

mon interests, and for mutual defense and guarantee against every 
hostile attack." In the north the protest of the Alliance was 
successful; but in his efforts to mediate between Eussia and 
Turkey, Pitt, who was the head of the Alliance, was not so suc- 
cessful, although he succeeded in detaching Austria from the 
support of Russia. 

The Triple Alliance, however, was soon to be called upon to 
grapple with a series of problems very different from those sug- 
gested by the aggressions of Russia in the Baltic or the 

Early am- Euxine. Within a few months after the formation of 
tude of Great 

Britain i\^q Alliance, the first notes of coming revolution were 

towards ' ° 

the French sounded through France. Yet up to the time of the 

Revolution. » ^ 

attempted flight of the French king in June 1791, the 

course of events in France elicited approval rather than alarm in 
England. The fall of the Bastille had been hailed with positive 
enthusiasm, and democratic societies, warmly sympathetic with 
the principles of the Revolution, had begun to come into prom- 
inence. Yet such movements owed their strength largely to 
academic interest, rather than to political discontent, and it soon 
became evident that the natural conservatism of the English 
people was taking alarm at the rapidity with which the radical 
element was winning control across the Channel.^ Pitt, however, 
who looked upon the Revolution with coldness, but not with 
distrust, had no thought of interfering; he desired the continu- 
ance of peace in order to carry out his plans of financial reform 
and of commercial and industrial expansion. The menace to the 
peace of Europe was still supposed to lie in the east, and in the 
presence of the ambitious schemes of Catharine, England no more 
than Austria or Prussia had any wish to tie her hands by inter- 
fering in the domestic affairs of France. 

With the year 1791, however, the conflagration in France 
developed so rapidly that her neighbors saw that to protect their 
own property, they must turn firemen and lend a hand to their 
Bourbon fellow; in August Frederick William of Prussia and 
the Emperor Leopold II. met at Pilnitz and declared against the 

^ As early as 1790 Burke had sounded a note of warning in his "Reflec- 
tions on the French Revolution." 



952 SECOND PERIOD OF TORY RULE [ 



George III 



Kevoliition. The wrath of the revolutionary party in France was 

particularly aroused against Austria because of the well-known 

sympathies of her court with the hated Marie Antoin- 

the war of the ette, and although the Declaration of Pilnitz was with- 

FrenchRe- . ° 

public against drawn Within two months after the convention, in April 

Europe, 1792. j,,,. „ ^ ^ ^ to 

lollowing ±1 ranee declared war. In September the 
National Convention abolished the Bourbon monarchy, and declared 
France a Eepnblic. In December Louis XVI. was tried and on 
January 21, 1793, executed. In October following, his Austrian 
queen suffered the same fate. The death of the weak but innocent 
king, the prison massacres, and the other atrocities that followed 
each other so rapidly during this dreadful year, filled Europe and 
especially England with horror. At the same time the advance 
of the French upon Holland made war with England inevitable. 
In the hysteria of revolution frenzy which had seized upon France 
she had, in fact, run amuck into the whole circle of neighboring 
states and compelled them to arm in self-defense. Thus the 
young Eepnblic soon had a serious war upon her hands; Holland, 
Prussia, and Austria attacked her on the north-east and east; 
Sardinia and Spain upon the south, and England upon the sea; 
while within her borders dangerous insurrections against revolu- 
tionary tyranny had already sprung up in La Vendee and Brittany 
and in the great southern cities of Marseilles and Lyons. For 
this strange war of infatuation France was poorly prepared ; her 
recruits were raw and witliout discipline, and fled in wild panic at 
the first attack of the allies. Yet her energy quickened with 
resistance, and before the year closed her armies had driven the 
allies from her northern frontier; Toulon had fallen, and the 
domestic revolts had been stamped out. The next year, 1794, saw 
Holland not only overrun and conquered, but organized upon the 
French model into tlie"Batavian Republic," and her arms turned 
upon her late allies. Only at the seaboard was the victorious march 
of the young Republic checked; on the "Glorious First of June," 
1794, Admiral Howe caught the French fleet off Ushant, and all but 
annihilated it. England easily took possession of the French East 
Indies, and when Holland was forced to join France, England also 
seized the Cape of Good Hope, Ceylon, Java, and the Spice Islands. 



1795] THE FIRST COALITION 953 

But the picking up of distant islands in the southern seas could 
not materially affect the great continental struggle. The allies, 
moreover, were fully as much inclined to fly at each 
Failure of other as to continne a contest in which France had 
tion,i795. proved fully able to defend herself. Austria and Prus- 
sia still cherished the old enmities born of the struggle 
of Frederick and Maria Theresa; both feared Russia, and when 
the Polish revolt of 1794 under Kosciuszko led up to the 
third partition of that unhappy country in the following year, the 
two powers, although subsidized by England, withdrew their 
troops from the Rhine. Austria and Sardinia kept up the strug- 
gle in Italy; but it was evident that the coalition had broken 
down. In April 1795 Prussia made peace with France at Basle, 
and in July Spain also made her terms. A belated royalist rising 
in La Vendee did nothing to turn the scales; it was overwhelmed 
by Hoche at Quiberon on July 20, and the prisoners, including 
many of the emigre, were massacred in cold blood. 

In England the reaction against the Revolution increased in 

intensity with the successes of the French. Parliament passed 

laws against suspected aliens, and against treasonable 

English con- ° ^ . ^ ^ mi • • • 

servative correspondence with France. The various societies, 
also, which had been formed in sympathy with the 
objects of the Revolution, if not with its methods, were put under 
the ban. In the general panic the Habeas Corpus Act was sus- 
pended, and finally in 1794 the leaders of the "London Corres- 
ponding Society" were tried for high treason. The panic, however, 
was subsiding and the leaders of the society were acquitted. 

In the meanwhile the Committee of Public Safety continued 
its reign of terror within the boundaries of France, until at last 
the members began to turn their fury upon each other. 
End of the No man was safe from suspicion, and to be suspected 
Terror, 1795. was to be devoted to the guillotine. The reaction 
began in 1794; the death of Robespierre and the fall 
of the Jacobins, followed by the establishment of the Directory in 
1795, gave a new phase to the Revolution. 

The defection of Prussia and Spain left Britain, Austria, and 
Sardinia to carry on the struggle alone. The cause of the allies, 



954 SECOND PEEIOD OF TORT RULE [gkorge III. 

however, was by no means hopeless. The Eepublic had long 
since exhausted its financial resources, and the Directory had very 
early proved its inability to solve the vexations prob- 
anceofBon- lems which Confronted it. The spirit of its armies was 
Italy, 1796, still good; yet half-starved, half -clad, ill -paid regi- 
ments, without proper arms or equipment, could not 
hope to keep the field before the well appointed armies which the 
allies, supported by English gold, continued to put in the field 
against them. But at this moment, the waning prestige of the 
Directory was reinforced by the splendid genius of Napoleon 
Bonaparte, a young Corsican officer of twenty-seven, who had 
recently been put in command of the French army in Italy. At 
the head of the ragged troops of the Republic, by a series of 
brilliant movements, remarkable for their rapidity and vigor, he 
forced Sardinia to sue for peace, drove the Austrians out of 
Italy and compelled the frightened emperor to accept the Peace 
of Campo-Formio, October 1797. He had already entrenched 
the French in Italy by organizing the conquered territories into 
vassal republics under a French protectorate. 

While Britain was thus shorn of her last ally upon the land, 
she still maintained her command of the seas. But the transfer of 
the support of Spain to the side of the Republic in 
^,^V'}}V'yf^ August 1796, had once more raised the naval power of 
feT^i797^^ France, already reinforced by the alliance of the Dutch, 
to a respectable footing, and enabled it to compare not 
unfavorably, in numbers at least, with the navy of Great Britain. 
It takes something more than ships and men, however, to win bat- 
tles at sea. On Fel)ruary 14, 1797 Sir John Jervis with fifteen 
ships defeated a combined fleet of twenty-seven French and Span- 
ish ships off Cape St. Vincent, and on October 11, Duncan defeated 
the Dutch off Camperdowu. These successes were of the utmost 
importance, because if the French could once succeed in breaking 
through the wall of ocean, they were certain to make trouble in 
Ireland, if they did not attempt a direct invasion of England 
from France. 

England was now feeling the severe depression that is 
always incident to any prolonged war. Her great minister had, 



1793-1796] EFFECT OF WAR IN" ENGLAND 955 

not desired the war; he had little sympathy with that undiscrim- 

inating hostility towards France which inspired the great 

majority of Englishmen. The war, moreover, had un- 

Effectiofthe done in part the work of his financial reforms. Taxation 

war upon ^ 

irlii^^ "'^^ ^^^ increased and the debt had been swelled by new 
loans. In 1793 more than one hundred English banks 
had failed, and in 1797 the Bank of England had been forced 
to suspend specie payment. The navy, upon which so much 
depended, was growing mutinous and discontented. The service 
was badly managed; the'' men were suffering from scanty and 
unwholesome rations; their pay was poor, and the very year 
of St. Vincent and Camperdown, formidable mutinies broke 
out at Spithead and the Nore. Ireland, also, was a constant 
source of anxiety. The reforms which had followed the American 
War had proved a disappointment, and instead of giving to Ire- 
land a satisfactory government had only riveted more closely the 
hold of the corrupt local oligarchy. The Catholic peasantry, 
whose wrongs were hardly less than those of the French peas- 
antry, formed secret organizations, like the "Peep of Day Boys," 
and terrorized the ruling minority by their secret outrages. The 
Anglican Protestants in turn, under the encouragement of the 
government, organized societies of "Orangemen" and repaid out- 
rage with outrage. Attempts at reform, connected with the 
names of Grattan and Fitz-William, were made, but to no purpose. 
In 1796 the "Society of United Irishmen," in which Presbyterians 
of Ulster made common cause with the Catholics of the middle 
and upper classes, in despair of securing redress from England, 
sent Wolfe Tone to France to appeal for aid. The Directory 
welcomed the appeal, and in December dispatched 20,000 men 
under Hoche to assist an Irish revolt. A storm dispersed the ves- 
sels and Hoche was obliged to return. The leaders in Ireland were 
seized ; an insurgent camp at Vinegar Hill was carried by assault, ' 
and the danger was over. The Directory, in the meanwhile, made 
a second attempt, but although the French force landed, the crisis 
was passed, and after a few successes the French surrendered to 
Cornwallis, the Lord Lieutenant. The increasing pressure at 
home and the constant threat of trouble in Ireland, were not 



956 SECOND PERIOD OF TORT RULE [GEOROEin. 

without their influence upon Pitt, and although public opinion 
still ran strong against any thought of peace, he determined to 
seek some opening for an understanding with France. All efforts, 
however, failed, chiefly because Pitt would not consent to allow 
France to retain her acquisitions in the Netherlands. 

The two implacable foes then once more addressed themselves 
to the struggle. Bonaparte, whose recent successes had made him 

an all powerful influence in France, persuaded the 
Egypt °^^^^^ Directory to enter upon a scheme wJiich even to-day 

looks more like the wild vagary of a dreamer than the 
sober plan of a man of affairs. He proposed to attack England in 
India, by first securing a base in Egypt and Syria. Yet visionary 
as the scheme appears, it might have succeeded, had it not been 
for the active vigilance of Nelson, who on August 1, 1798, anni- 
hilated the French fleet in Aboukir Bay and thus severed Bona- 
parte's communications with France. Victorious as was the little 
army of invasion, without reinforcements, and without connection 
with France, final success was impossible. After overrunning 
Egypt, destroying the Mameluke power, and invading Syria, 
Bonaparte was at last compelled to retrace his steps, and leaving 
his army in Egypt in command of the brave Kleber, he ran the 
gauntlet of the English fleet, and in November 1799 reached 
France in safety. 

Pitt, in the meanwhile, had fallen back upon his old tactics 
and sought to reach France by forming another coalition, in which 

England, Eussia, and Austria were the chief members. 

The Second Catharine II. had died in 1796, and her successor, Paul 

Coalition, 

1798,1799. L, had abandoned her policy of aggrandizement in the 

east, to join the western powers against France. Tur- 
key, roused by the attack of the French upon Egypt and Syria, 
had also joined the league. Prussia, however, refused to abandon 
her neutrality. The attack was begun upon the whole line of the 
recent conquests of France. In Italy and western Germany, the 
Austrian and Eussian armies were everywhere successful, and 
had soon undone the work of Bonaparte. Only in Holland and in 
Switzerland, which had been organized in 1798 as the "Helvetic 
Eepublic," the French managed to hold their own. 



1799, 1800] THE BILL OP UNION" 957 

At this point Bonaparte landed. The Directory was thor- 
oughly discredited; its corruption was a matter of common belief; 
its incompetence had been fully established. Bona- 
oPisBrum- P^^'^® grasped the situation at once. Jie first unseated 
btrh^mg"'' ^^^® Directory and secured for himself as "First Con- 
sul," the authority of a virtual dictator; he then 
turned upon the enemies of France. He succeeded in detaching 
from the alliance the Czar Paul, whose enthusiastic admiration 
for "the man of the people," rendered him an easy victim to the 
blandishments of the First Consul, Bonaparte then crossed the 
Great St. Bernard and in June 1800 fell upon the Austrians at 
Marengo, while Moreau won an even more overwhelming victory 
over a second Austrian army at Hohenlinden. The strength of 
Austria was broken, and at Luneville, February 1801, the emperor 
was glad to accept peace on the terms offered by the First Consul. 
Thus a second coalition had dashed itself to pieces upon the 
young Republic, and England was left again single-handed to 
face her enemy. Her position was worse than it had 

?f§ngiand ^^®^^ ^^ -'■'^^'^- "^'^ ^^® °^^®^' burdens incident to the 
war, was to be added the disheartening influence of a 
depreciating paper currency. The land tax had risen to 4s in 
the pound, and in 1799 an income tax had been added, which 
taxed all incomes above £60 a year. Abroad, also, a reckless disre- 
gard of the rights of neutrals had led the Baltic powers, Sweden, 
Denmark, and Prussia, under the leadership of Czar Paul, to 
revive the armed neutrality of the period of the American war. 
This action was ominous; Bonaparte was known to be intriguing 
with the sea powers against England, and Pitt saw himself in 
turn threatened with a dangerous coalition, 

Ireland was still a subject of deep anxiety to English states- 
men. The failure of the attempt to govern Ireland by an inde- 
pendent Irish parliament had only emphasized the need 
"Biw^'f' ^^^ ^^ some more satisfactory plan of conciliating the hostile 
Union," elements in order to save Ireland if possible. Pitt 
accordingly brought forward a plan of legislative 
union, which resembled the union that already existed between 
England and Scotland, It was accepted by the Irish parliament 



958 SECOND PERIOD OF TORY RULE [gkorgk ill. 

in February 1800, by the British parliament in July, and went 
into force on the 1st of January 1801, creating "The United 
Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland." The Irish were to be 
represented in the common parliament by four spiritual lords, 
twenty-eight temporal peers, chosen by the Irish peerage for life, 
and one hundred members for the Commons, chosen sixty-four for 
the counties, thirty-five for the boroughs, and one for the University 
of Dublin. The Anglican Church of Ireland was to be united to 
the State Church of England. Taxation was to be distributed 
proportionately; the national debts of the two countries were to 
be kept separate ; and no restrictions were to be laid on commerce 
between the two countries.^ 

By the terms of the "Bill of Union" Ireland apparently was 
receiving somewhat more generous treatment than Scotland in 
1707. But unfortunately the great mass of the popu- 
tionofPitt, lation in Ireland were disfranchised by their religious 
faith. It was a part of Pitt's general plan of concilia- 
tion, however, to follow the union by emancipating the Irish 
Catholics. But George was persuaded to believe that the conces- 
sions proposed by Pitt would force him to violate his coronation 
oath, and Pitt saw himself checked with his plan of union only 
half realized. He knew the king; he knew that it was useless 
either to argue or plead, and like the man of spirit that he was, 
resigned. 

The successor of Pitt, Henry Addington, his old time friend, 

not being specially committed to the French war, was free to take 

steps towards securing the much needed peace. Eecent 
The peace of ,11, i-,i t- 

Amiens, eveuts had alreadv paved the wav bv impressing upon 

March 1802. -j i- j j 1. o j. 

Bonaparte the hopelessness of carrying on a war in 
which he could not strike his antagonist. In 1800 the English 
had got possession of Malta; in March of the next year Abercrom- 
biehad defeated the French at Alexandria, and by midsummer the 
French had surrendered their last stronghold in Egypt. Eng- 
land, moreover, had taken the armed neutrality of the northern 
powers as a threat of war and had promptly sent Admiral Parker, 
with Nelson as second in command, to seize the Danish fleet in 
1 Lee, Som^ce Book, pp. 483-497. 



1802] AMIENS 959 

the harbor of Copenhagen. In March Napoleon's friend Czar Paul 
was assassinated; this, with the loss of the Danish fleet, put an 
end to Napoleon's dream of a northern coalition against England. 
In June the British government recognized the justice of the 
claims of the northern states by conceding the disputed points, 
chief of which was her claim of the right to seize neutral ships if 
bound for an enemy's port that was under a nominal blockade. 
With these concessions the armed neutrality dissolved. England 
was thus once more lord of the seas, but she could not strike 
France without continental allies, and Napoleon could not strike 
England without the support of the naval powers. Both sides, 
moreover, needed a breathing spell. In March 1802 the much 
needed truce was concluded at Amiens. The recent acquisitions 
of France and the extension of her power in Europe were 
conceded. England restored to France and her allies, Spain and 
Holland, all her conquests except Trinidad and Ceylon. She prom- 
ised, also, to restore Malta to the Knights of St. John. The king 
of England renounced the title of King of France, which he had 
held since the time of Edward III., and the Bourbon lilies hence- 
forth disappeared from tlie royal arms of England. England, also, 
recognized the French Republic. France, in turn, renounced all 
claims founded upon her unsuccessful Egyptian expedition. The 
peace with its one-sided concessions was severely criticised by 
Pitt's friends, but it was welcome in England, for taxation was 
heavy and the amount of the debt had become appalling. Sheri- 
dan called it "a peace which everyone would be glad of, but which 
nobody would be proud of." Yet men hoped it might be sincere 
and permanent. 

Thus far France had been fighting ostensibly to extend the 

principles of the Eevolution. Whatever may be thought of the 

leaders or their methods, the motive of the men who 

Change in , 

French fought in the ranks was high and holy, — to liberate the 

people of Europe from the slavery of the old order. 

Before that sublime impulse the abuses of a thousand years had 

been swept away. States had been overtlirown, but peoples had 

been redeemed. Old feudal lines of partition had been obliterated, 

nations had been unified, and the whole political system of Europe 



960 SECOND PEEIOD OF TORT RULE [georgbIII. 

made more compact. England had looked on approvingly during 
the early stages of the Revolution ; but the frenzied earnestness of 
the heralds of "the rights of man" had first offended her and then 
filled her with alarm. She saw in the triumph of the Revolution 
not only the overthrow of religious and social order, but the 
destruction of the European balance which Englishmen had been 
toiling to establish since the days of William III., and which they 
regarded as so essential to their commercial and industrial pros- 
perity. In Najjoleon, moreover, the propaganda of revolution 
rapidly assumed a new phase; he entertained no benevolent 
schemes for the liberation of the oppressed ; but thought only of 
gathering all the tremendous energy which the Revolution had 
generated, and directing it to the crushing of England and the 
reducing of Europe to timid submission to the dictates of France. 
Unconsciously the Revolution had drifted back again to the Louis 
XIV. policy, but in an intensified and exaggerated form. Thus, 
whatever disquieting compunctions the conscience of England may 
have felt early in the struggle, had speedily passed away when the 
people began to comprehend the real nature of the conflict, — the 
struggle of a free people with an uncompromising despot. It was 
this struggle M^iich England now faced. " 

To Bonaparte the peace of Amiens was merely a truce to give 
him time to prepare for his next move. The Addington miuistry 

was timid and committed to peace; yet even Adding- 
war^lm"^ ton was stung by the insolence of the First Consul, and 

believing that the renewal of the war was inevitable, 

refused to surrender Malta. Bonaparte naturally made much of 

the breach of the recent peace, and in May 1803 again declared war. 

Bonaparte, for France was now Bonaparte, was apparently 

stronger than ever. In August 1802 he had been made Consul 

for life, and on May 18, 1804, he was proclaimed 
forfiivasion ^apoleon I., Hereditary Emperor of the French. 
of England, Toward 4;he end of 1804 he persuaded Spain again to 

join France against England. He had already made 
extensive plans for a direct invasion of England and had man- 
aged to stir up revolts in Ireland and India. The rising in Ire- 
land, however, spent itself in a city riot in Dublin, and the leader, 



1805] TRAPALGAE 961 

Robert Emmett, was hanged. France was equally powerless to 
help the native princes in India, where Richard Wellesley, Lord 
Mornington, the English Governor- General, put down each rising 
with a vigorous hand. He was aided by a noble corps of ofiicers, 
among whom was the governor's famous brother Arthur. By the 
end of 1804 all India outside of the Indus valley and Rajputana, 
had passed under the English yoke. But the serious threat to 
England came not from Ireland, much less from India, but from 
Boulogne, where Napoleon was massing a splendid army of one 
hundred and fifty thousand men with evident intent of a direct 
descent upon the English coast. Could he but control the Channel 
for a few hours, and bring his matchless military strength to bear 
directly upon England, he miight dictate what terms he pleased 
to his rival. The English were fully awake to their danger. An 
army of three hundred thousand volunteers was mustered into 
service, and held at convenient posts where they could be readily 
massed upon a threatened point. In May Pitt was again called 
upon to assume the duties of Prime Minister. Through the 
spring Napoleon pushed forward his preparations, only to postpone 
the final attempt to the next season. 

When the year 1805 opened. Napoleon seemed at last ready for 
action. His plan was well laid; the scattered ships, shut up in 
the various harbors of France, were to break the blockade and 
with the Spanish fleet rendezvous at some port in the West Indies 
in hope that Nelson would follow them. They would then make 
a dash for the English Channel, and with their combined strength 
might possibly hold it long enough to enable Napoleon's transports 
to empty their troops into the island. The first part of the plan 
was successfully carried out. Nelson not only gave chase, but 
the French Admiral Villeneuve managed to elude him and get 
back to the Spanish coast again early in July. Nelson, however, 
had divined the real nature of the manoeuver and sent 

Trafalgar, , . , • , i , i , ci • -n i j 

October 21, timely warning to the government, so that Sir Robert 
Calder with fifteen ships was able to meet the allies 
ofi: Cape Finisterre. Calder was unable to prevent the return of 
the French fleet, but Villeneuve thought best to retire to Cadiz 
where he remained inactive for two months; and when he left 



962 SECOISTD PERIOD OF TORY RULE [geobge ill. 

Cadiz in October, it was only to fall in with Nelson "in Trafalgar 
Bay" and lose his entire fleet. The victory of Trafalgar was 
decisive; its results permanent; bat it cost the life of England's 
brave admiral. His historic battle message, "England expects 
every man to do his duty," was characteristic of his sturdy patri- 
otism. 

The English, in the meanwhile, were busily plying negotiations 

preliminary to the formation of a new coalition. The reckless 

disregard which Napoleon had displayed for the feel- 

The Third l -j 

Coalition. ings of the powers made the task easy. Prussia, though 

A.usterlitz o j. j 7 n 

and Press- deeply vexed by the establishment of a French force at 

burg. i. J J 

the mouth of the Elbe, remained neutral; but Alex- 
ander of Eussia was ready to accede to the proposal of Eugland, 
and in 1805 entered into the Anglo-Russian Treaty which pur- 
posed to form a European league capable of placing five hundred 
thousand men in the field. No peace was to be made with France 
except by common consent. England, on her part, agreed to 
furnish subsidies to each of the allies. The immediate object of 
the coalition, as in the league of William III. in 1701, was the 
recovery of French conquests and the establishment of barriers 
against French ambition. Austria desired peace, but when she 
saw that war was inevitable, joined the allies, and sent General 
Mack to occupy Bavaria, whose elector was friendly to Napoleon. 
But Napoleon was already moving swiftly forward to support his 
ally, and before October closed had surrounded Mack at Ulm and 
forced him to surrender with twenty-five thousand men. He then 
pressed on to Vienna, driving the Austrians northward to a junc- 
tion with their Eussian allies; and on December 2, defeated the 

combined armies at Austerlitz in the historic "Battle 
December's, of the Three Emperors." The Russians retired; and 

Francis to save himself, on I>ecember 26, signed the 
Peace of Pressburg, by which he ceded his Italian possessions to 
the French, and the Tyrol to Bavaria. 

In less than three months after Trafalgar, death robbed Eng- 
land of her greatest leader. Pitt had been steadily sinking under 
the cares of his position, prematurely aged at forty-six; and when 
the news of the awful disaster at Austerlitz, following so closely 



1806] DEATH OF PITT 963 

that of Ulm, reached him, he never recovered from the shock. He 

died on the 23d of January. His position had been "one of almost 

tragic irony. An economist heaping up millions of 

Death of debt: a peace minister dragged into the costliest of 
PitUJanu- \ ■ ,, , n , ■, r^ -i . , ,, tt 

arv23,i806. wars; he is the very type oi the baffled sta-tesman. He 

loved peace, yet he saw that with Napoleon there 
could be no compromise; the fight must be to a finish. He had 
built up coalition after coalition, only to see them shattered before 
the marvelous skill of this master of war craft. Pressburg he 
thought was the end. "Roll up the map of Europe," he said, "it 
will not be wanted for ten years." Yet the struggle was by no 
means over. Trafalgar was after all to be more enduring than 
Austerlitz. 

The moment, however, was critical. By ceding his conquest 
of Hanover to Prussia, Napoleon had bribed the Prussian king to 

ioin him against the coalition. Before the end of 1805 

Napoleon ,, 

supreme in he had placed his brother Joseph upon the ancient 
throne of Naples. In the summer following, he organ- 
ized the German States into the "Confederation of the Rhine" 
under a French protectorate, for which he had prepared the way two 
years earlier by abolishing the host of petty independent feudatories 
that had heretofore made any larger union impossible. The same 
year witnessed the formal abandonment by the emperor of the 
now meaningless titles of the Holy Roman Empire. Thus Napoleon 
had all western, central, and southern Europe at his feet. Spain 
and even Turkey were friendly. Only Britain and Russia remained 
formidable. 

In England party strife was hushed by the death of Pitt. 

Whigs and Tories united in the "Ministry of All the Talents;" 

Grenville became Prime Minister and Fox and Adding- 

" Ministry of ton, now Lord Sidmouth, Secretaries of State. Fox 

AUtheTal: ' • • i j 

ente," 1806. bad opposed the war on principle, and saw no reason 
why the two countries could not come to some fair and 
rational understanding. But Napoleon soon disabused his mind 
of its peace theories, and before Fox's death in September, he saw 
what Pitt had long since seen, that nothing would satisfy Napoleon 
but the destruction of the British Empire. 



964 SECOND PERIOD OF TORT RULE [geokgeIII. 

The treatment which Napoleon meted out to his new ally, 

Prussia, was fully calculated to drive to desperation a brave people 

who had not yet forgotten the day of the Great Fred- 

The sacrifice .. t -^r ^ -.^^ -• -, -.i ..-r^ 

of Prussia eriCK. in March 1806 he closed the ports of Prussia 

ty of Tilsit, and Hail ovcr to English vessels. England retorted by 
seizing some four hundred Prussian vessels that lay in 
her harbors, and by sweeping Prussian commerce from the 
seas. Notwithstanding these sacrifices Napoleon coolly proposed 
to concede Fox's demand that the restitution of Hanover to the 
king of England should be the first condition of peace. Prussia 
was thus unwillingly put at odds with England, at the very 
moment when national honor compelled her to meet Napoleon's 
insolence and tyranny with a declaration of war. She was poorly 
prepared for war ; she was without allies, and her military organi- 
zation was an antiquated shell. At Jena and Auerstadt Napoleon 
rudely dispelled the inflated conceit of the Prussian marshals, and 
in October entered Berlin in triumph. The fortresses of Prussia 
were surrendered with shameful haste. Yet Frederick William 
refused to yield to Napoleon's exorbitant demands, and assured of 
Russian support continued the war. Help, however, came too 
late. The murderous though indecisive battle of Eylau, followed 
by the victory of the French at Friedland, brought both Alexander 
and Frederick William to consent to the Peace of Tilsit, July 
1807. British ships and British trade were excluded from Prus- 
sian harbors, and Prussia was spoiled of half her territory, part of 
which, with Hanover, was erected into the kingdom of Westphalia. 
In a secret treaty the Russian emperor agreed to an alliance with 
France against England, should she refuse to accept the terms 
dictated by himself; as a reward, he was to be allowed to extend 
Russian influence in Sweden and the Ottoman Empire. 

England was now once more left to o23pose Napoleon single- 
handed. She had proved herself invincible in every direct attack 
Thc'Conti- ^^P^n the seas; but with the new Russian alliance 
tem"\806^' Napoleon virtually controlled the entire seaboard of 
1807. Europe, and at last it was possible to reach a vulner- 

able point in his enemy's harness. If he could only exclude the 
English from the ports of Europe, he might strike a telling blow 



1806, 1807] THE CONTINENTAL SYSTEM 965 

at English commerce and industry, and bring the nation to its 
knees. In November 1806 he took the first step in putting into 
effect his so called "Continental System," by publishing, a series 
of decrees from Berlin which declared the British Isles in a state 
of blockade, forbade all commerce between Great Britain or her 
colonies and the territories occupied by France or her allies, and 
ordered the confiscation of all British merchandise wherever 
found. In January 1807, England retaliated with her "First 
Orders in Council," declaring the ports of France and her allies 
in a state of blockade and neutral vessels trading between them 
lawful prize. 

The struggle had now passed from a war of navies and armies 
to a duel by starvation, to see which people could endure hunger 
the longer. In this grim conflict, however, the 
Continental^ advantages still rested with the English. They still 
ytstem. j^^^ their colonial trade, which, while nothing com- 

pared with what it is to-day and much diminished by the recent 
American war from what it had been in the eighteenth century, was 
still of considerable importance. The prohibition of trade, more- 
over, so raised the price of English goods, that the rewards of 
smuggling were increased enormously and it was impossible for 
Napoleon to draw the meshes so tight that the smuggler could not 
get through, or the English manufacturer find an outlet for 
his goods. The English people, also, were deeply interested 
in the war, and were far more willing to suffer in what they 
regarded as the cause of religion and humanity against the 
French military tyrant, than the people of the continent, who had 
taken little interest in the struggle apart from their governments 
and now began to execrate the name of Napoleon for the losses and 
sufferings occasioned by the commercial ruin of Europe. In one 
respect Napoleon succeeded; the English carrying trade was 
ruined for the time, and neutral commerce left English ships. The 
Americans, whose position had thus far exempted them from 
taking any part in the struggle, were the chief gainers. 

Not long after the Orders in Council the Grenville ministry 
came to an end. The ministers had proposed to abolish the military 
disqualifications of Catholics; but the king compelled them to 



966 SECOISTD PERIOD OF TORY R'ULE [gkorge ill. 

withdraw the measure, and when they refused to pledge themselves 
not to reopen the question of disability, he dismissed both min- 
istry and parliament, and appealed to the country. The result 

was to entrench the Tories more strongly than ever in 
orenviUe control of the government. One memorable act of 

reform dates from the Ministry of All the Talents; 
in March 1807, Great Britain formally abolished the slave 
trade. 

The new administration was headed by the inefficient duke of 
Portland, but included Canning and Castlereagh as Secretaries, 

neither of whom was lacking in the fire and energy 
The Portland that Were needed in the government if England were 
the riniatiim to succced. Russia was now Napoleon's avowed ally; 

oftherights . i , i x vx i 

of neutrals. Sweden was forced to renounce her neutrality, and 
Denmark also was apparently to be dragged" into the 
coalition against England. Canning acted promptly. He sent a 
fleet to Copenhagen to demand the surrender of the Danish fleet 
under pledge of returning it at the end of the war. When the 
demand was refused, the bombarduient of Copenhagen followed ; 
the Danish fleet was taken and with it large supplies of naval 
stores. Canning followed this bold move of September by a still 
more daring step in November when he issued a second series of 
Orders in Council, closing to the ships of all nations every port in 
Europe from which English ships were excluded, and rendering all 
vessels bound thither liable to seizure, unless they had first 
touched at a British port. In December Napoleon replied in the 
"Milan Decree," which made neutral vessels liable to seizure if 
they touched at a British port, or submitted to be searched by 
British cruisers. These orders, which not only threatened the 
economic ruin of every state in western Europe, but brought the 
infant American Republic at last within the sphere of the war, 
completed the Continental System. Britain in her desperate effort 
to retaliate upon her powerful antagonist, had fully matched his 
tyranny in disregarding the rights of neutral powers. 

Napoleon's plot to secure naval assistance in the north having 
been frustrated by the prompt action of Canning, his next move 
was to force Portugal to turn upon her long time friends and 



1808] THE PENINSULAR WAR 967 

join the Continental System. Portugal refused and the war 

which followed involved the entire peninsula. The royal family of 

Portugal fled to Brazil, and Lisbon passed into French 
Napoleon in , t -p, -r, 

thePenin- hands. But Portugal had no sooner been overrun than 
sula. 

Napoleon turned upon his allies, the witless Bour- 
bons of Spain, deposed Charles IV. , and made his own brother 
Joseph king. 

Heretofore Napoleon had handled the principalities and powers 
of Europe with the indifference with which a chess player uses 
Uprj^iiiio of his pieces, sweeping ancient families from the board or 
BiYjiimimj' ' parcelling out kingdoms as the exigencies of the game 
suiar War. demanded. He had, however, utterly ignored one ele- 
ment in the problem, the nation, and this omission was now to 
prove his ruin. The Spanish people rose as one man to fight for 
independence and national honor, and to avenge the wrong which 
had been done to their national sovereign. England was nominally 
at war with Spain, but when the news of the uprising against 
Napoleon reached England, Canning declared, "Aiiy nation oppos- 
ing France becomes instantly our ally." Help was sent at once, 
and on August 1, 1808, Sir Arthur Wellesley with eighteen thou- 
sand British troops landed at Mondego Bay in Portugal, and within 
three weeks had won the important battles of Rorica and Vimiero. 
While Vimiero was in progress Sir Henry Burrard, an old officer of 
no distinction but Wellesley 's superior in command, landed and 
assumed direction of the English invasion of Portugal. Against 
the advice of Wellesley he entered into the Convention of Cintra, 
by which he allowed Junot, the French general, to retire peaceably 
into France. The English public were Justly indignant when they 
learned of the escape of the French ; the officers were brought to 
trial and the command of the peninsular army was turned over to 
Sir John Moore. Moore was a gallant officer, but in his attempt 
to cooperate with the Spanish peasants, he got little support, and 
found himself at last confronted by Napoleon himself with an 
jirmy of two hundred thousand men. He made a skillful retreat 
of two hundred and fifty miles to Corunna on the coast, and at last 
got his little army safely out of the country, though at the cost of 
his own life. He was buried on the ramparts of Corunna. 



968 SECOND PERIOD OF TORT RULE [george hi. 

Napoleon had left Soult to pursue Moore and end what he con- 
temptuously called "the war of monks and peasants," while he 
himself turned to meet a new rising of the Austrians. 
Campaigns -pj^e Austrians looked to England to make a diversion in 

of Wagram ^ 

cha-m'^mg "^^^^^^ favor by attacking Antwerp. But before the expe- 
dition had left England, Napoleon had overwhelmed the 
Austrians at Wagram, and when at last the English army, forty 
thousand strong, landed in Holland, they were sacrificed to the 
stupid incompetency of their commander, the earl of Chatham, 
Pitt's elder brother, who left fifteen thousand men to die in the 
fever haunted marshes of the island of Walcheren. 

Wellesley, in the meanwhile, had returned to command in the 
Peninsula. In July 1809 after two days' fighting, he won a com- 
Thewith- P^ste victory over the French at Talavera, for which he 
(^awaiof ^r^g created Viscount Wellington. His losses, how- 

Riissiafrom ° ' 

theContt- ever, were so serious that he was compelled to retire to 

nental Sys- ' ^ 

tern. Portugal before the advance of fresh troops under 

Soult. The failure of England to make the promised diversion 
left Austria at the mercy of Napoleon, and in October, 1809, she 
was compelled to accept the humiliating Treaty of Vienna, and 
see her territories still further partitioned among France and her 
allies. Yet, although the half-hearted support of Britain had 
done little for Austria, her example had stimulated the rising spirit 
of patriotism among the Germans; while the very treaty which 
marks the depths of Austria's humiliation, was the means ulti- 
mately of alienating Russia and throwing her influence against 
Napoleon. In December 1810, Alexander withdrew from 
Napoleon's commercial system, which had proved ruinous to 
Eussian trade, opened his harbors to neutral vessels, and imposed 
duties on many French products. Neither Eussia nor France 
was in haste for war, but both countries saw that war was 
unavoidable and continued making vast preparations during the 
year 1811. 

In Portugal Wellington was still living up to his reputation as 
the "hooked nose beggar that licks the French," a title which had 
been given him after Talavera by his admiring soldiers. In Sep- 
tember 1810, Massena, who stood highest in military reputation 



1810-1812] 



THE LIKES OF TOKKES VEDEAS 



969 



among all Napoleon's marshals, entered Portugal with seventy 
thousand men, only to be driven out again with a loss of thirty 
thousand men. This triumph Wellington owed largely to his fore- 
thought in shutting off Lisbon from the rest of Por- 
tugal by a double line of impregnable barriers which 
extended from the Tagus to the sea, known as the Lines 
of Torres Vedras. He had also systematically wasted the outlying 
country from which the enemy must draw their support. As the 
French retired Wellington advanced, only to be confronted by the 



The "Lines 
of Torres 
Ved/ras." 




■J Peninsular Campaigns 
of WELLESLEY 



approach of another French army from Spain under Sonlt, and 
compelled once more to retire within his lines. Thus Wellington 
and Napoleon's marshals wrestled back and forth over the desolate 
peninsula during the year 1811. Fortresses were taken and 
retaken; the assault of the British on Badajoz in April 1812, 
stands out almost alone in the annals of war for the fury of the 
attack and the desperation of the resistance. 



970 SECOND PEEIOD OF TORT RULE [georgeIIL 

While Wellington was thus sustaining the honor of Britain in 
the Peninsula, the cabinet became the scene of disgraceful quarrel- 
ing between Canning and Castlereagh, which in 1809 
Enaiand^ ended in a duel and the resignation of both ministers. 
The same month Portland, also, retired on account of 
failing health, and Spencer Perceval, "an industrious mediocrity of 
the narrowest type," became Prime Minister. In 1810 George 
III. celebrated his "Jubilee." Immediately after he succumbed to 
the malady which had haunted him since 1788, and which now 
"virtually became permanent for the rest of his life. In February 
1811 parliament conferred on the Prince of Wales the regency with 
powers restricted as in 1788, but the next year in the prolonged 
illness of the king, the restrictions were removed. In May 1812 
Perceval was assassinated in the lobby of the Commons by a mer- 
chant named Bellingham, a poor madman, who had lost his wits 
in consequence of misfortunes which had come upon him as a 
result of the war. It was hoped in some quarters that the Whigs 
might return to power now that George III. 's reign had virtually 
ended, but the Whigs were pledged to Catholic Emancipation, 
and for this the country was not yet ready. The Tory ministry, 
therefore, was reorganized under Eobert Jenkinson, Lord Liver- 
pool; Castlereagh was placed in charge of the Foreign Office, 
and Sidmouth, of the Home Office. 

One of Castlereagh 's first acts was to procure the repeal of 
Canning's Orders in Council which had added the United States 
to the enemies of England. The close of the American 
warwitnthe devolution had by no means ended the bitter feeling 
¥tates' which existed between England and America. The 

mother country had grudgingly recognized the new 
liepublic in the Treaty of Amity and Commerce of 1794. The 
continental struggle, moreover, had raised many new points of 
dispute, and the old bitterness revived. The orders and decrees 
of Great Britain and France were met by Jefferson's embargo pol- 
icy, which accomplished little save the ruin of American merchants. 
Under Madison's administration a more vigorous policy was urged 
by Calhoun, Clay, and Crawford, the young and enthusiastic lead- 
ers of a war party. The act known as "Macon's Bill No. 2" pro- 



1812-1815] THE AMERICAN WAR OF 1812 971 

vided that if either Great Britain or France should revoke its 
orders or decrees the United States would prohibit trade with the 
other. Napoleon was quick to see his opportunity and by an 
apparent fulfillment of the conditions of the act induced the 
United States to revive the nonimportation act against Great 
Britain. It was this new danger, the possibility of a junction 
between Napoleon and the United States and the consequent ruin 
of English industry, that hastened Castlereagh's action. But 
it was already too late. On the 18th of June, five days after the 
repeal of the Orders in Council, the United States declared war 
against Great Britain. In the campaigns of the two years which 
followed there was little to be proud of either in the American 
invasions of Canada or in the British raid on Washington. But on 
the Great Lakes and at sea the young American navy won some 
brilliant victories over her mature rival, while at New Orleans 
on January 8, 1815, Jackson retrieved the faults of incapable 
military leaders by defeating the veterans of the Peninsular War. 
Peace, which had already been made at Ghent, December 24, 
1814, settled none of the questions which had occasioned the war, 
but in the changed conditions which followed Waterloo, they faded 
rapidly into insignificance. 

While America was thus fighting Napoleon's battles in the 
western hemisphere, he had already entered upon the fatal con- 
test with Eussia. In the late spring of 1812 he massed 
Campaign, four hundred and fifty thousand men on the Russian 
frontier, and in June crossed the Niemen. Austria 
and Prussia had sent their contingents, and the neighboring 
countries were swept bare in order to furnish supplies. Alexan- 
der fully understood tlie defensive strength of Russia, and quietly 
retired as the French advanced, knowing that every day's march 
into his territories must increase the diflSculties of feeding the 
vast host which followed Napoleon. In early September Alexan- 
der yielded to the clamors of the Russians sufficiently to risk a 
battle at Borodino, in which he lost thirty thousand men; yet 
although the French losses were still greater, he failed to arrest 
the tide of invasion and continued his withdrawal towards Mos- 
cow. On the 14th of September Napoleon entered the Holy City, 



972 SECOND PERIOD OF TORY RULE [gkorgb III. 

only to find it silent and deserted. Five days later it was swept 
by fire, probably the work of the Russians. Napoleon could ad- 
vance no farther; the Czar showed no intention of proposing 
peace, and on October 19, the French began the fatal retreat. 
On November 6, the Russian winter set in with intense cold, blind- 
ing storms, and heavy snows. When Napoleon reached the Niemen 
on December 13, only a sad and shattered remnant of the magnificent 
army that had crossed in June remained. Napoleon, the invincible, 
had been beaten at last, not by the Russians, but by Russia. 

At the border Napoleon was met by reinforcements and turned 

again to strike his foes, but the spell of Napoleon's name had 

been broken and everywhere the friends of liberty took 

The Fourth 

Coalition, fresh heart. In February the Treaty of Kalisch, 
which placed Prussia by the side of Russia and Sweden, 
inaugurated a fourth coalition. In June Britain and Austria 
joined, and before the end of the year most of the German states 
had risen to take their share in the glorious "War of Liberation." 
In August, in a series of battles fought around Dresden, Napoleon 
won his last victory on German soil. Yet, though he managed to 
hold his foes at bay for a little longer, he failed utterly to break 
the iron ring which was closing about him. At Leipsic, in a 
three days' battle, October 10-18, he was fairly overwhelmed by 
the numbers which his enemies poured upon him, and compelled to 
resume his retreat toward the Rhine. At Frankfort he refused 
an offer of peace, and early in January 1814 the allies crossed the 
Rhine. At the same time Wellington was slowly fighting his way 
through the Pyrenees, and early in the year entered France from 
the south. In March the allies approached Paris; a few days 
later Napoleon abdicated and retired to the island of Elba, while 
the Bourbons were once more restored to the French throne. 

Napoleon was now beaten. The great shadow which had so 
long hung over Europe was dispelled. It remained for the allies 
The Fifth ^^ meet and undo his work. Accordingly in Septem- 
1814-15^'^' ber, a congress of the powers met at Vienna. But the 
naiaToT commissioners had hardly begun their work, when 
Waterloo. Europe was startled from its dream of peace by 
the news that Napoleon had landed in France, that the Second 



1815] 



"WATERLOO 



973 



Bourbon Monarchy had been swept away, and. that Napoleon 
was again Emperor of the French. The ambassadors of the 
four great powers at Vienna, Great Britain, Austria, Prussia, and 
Eussia, at once abandoned their diplomatic quarreling to form a 
fifth coalition in order to destroy the common enemy before he 
could gather the strength of France. Napoleon's veterans rallied 
to his support and in a few weeks he had gathered a powerful 
army and was marching toward the Belgian border. He hoped 




by the rapidity of his movements to crush his many foes in detail 
before they could concentrate their strength. On June 16 he 
beat the Prussian Bliicher at Ligny before he had time to unite 
with the mixed Anglo-Belgian army with which Wellington held 
the road to Brussels. On the 18th Napoleon advanced to meet 
Wellington who had taken up a strong position on the slope of Mont 
St. Jean near Waterloo. For seven hours the "Iron Duke" dog- 
gedly held his position, while Napoleon hurled his cavalry and 
infantry upon the British squares. After the battle of the 16th 



974 SECOND PERIOD OF TORY EULE [gkorgk III. 

Napoleon had sent Grouchy after Bliicher to keep the Prussians 
from reforming, but Grouchy had failed to execute his mission, and 
towards evening of the 18th Wellington from his beset position on 
Mont St. Jean saw the long dark line of the Prussians breaking from 
the woods on his left. With a shout the English squares, which 
had stood on the defensive during that long terrible day, advanced 
upon theh' foes. Napoleon's weary troops could not withstand the 
fresh masses tliat were now hurled upon them. The Old Guard 
was ordered into action; for a moment tlie tide of battle was 
stayed; but their splendid discipline, their matchless courage, 
availed nothing before the odds which now confronted them. In a 
few moments the last army of Napoleon was a wild mob of panic- 
smitten fugitives, choking the roads and thronging the ravines 
which led from the battlefield. Napoleon fled to Paris, abdicated 
a second time, and then surrendered himself to the commander of 

the British warship Bellerophon. He was finally sent 
St. Helena. 

to the lonely rock off the coast of Africa, where he 
died in 1821. Louis XVIII. was again brought back, and France, 
beside paying a war indemnity of £28,000,000, was compelled to 
support an army of occupation for five years. Her territories were 
reduced to the old lines which had prevailed before the begin- 
ning of the war of 1792. Naples, also, was restored to its Bourbon 
kings. Holland and the old Austrian Netherlands were raised into 
a kingdom under the House of Orange. The princes of Germany 
were united into a German Confederation. The king of Sardinia 
received Genoa and Upper Savoy. Great Britain restored Java to the 
Dutch but retained Heligoland, Tobago, St. Lucia, Ceylon, and 
Cape Colony, the beginning of her power in South Africa. Her 
hold in the Mediterranean was secured by the retention of Malta 
and by the inauguration of a protectorate over the Ionian Islands. 
Thus ended at last the Second Hundred Years' War between 
England and France. Napoleon had been compelled to take up the 
^ old struggle with the rising power of Great Britain which Louis 
XIV. had begun in 1689, and had failed for the same reason 
that Louis had failed. Pitt had been forced to resume the 
work of William and Marlborough and had succeeded as they had 
succeeded, and for the same reason. The national policy of 



1689-1815] THE SECOND HUNDRED YEARS' WAR 975 

France had always been one of concentration and suppression. 
She had developed a vast centralized state, all powerful on the 
Thereiation ^'^^^^^ ^^^^ i^i ^^LC eighteenth century, apparently with- 
uonU: wars' ^^^^ a peer in Europe. But her people had not developed 
%foVtM^' ^^^®ii' resources correspondingly; they had not learned 
centm^r*'' ^^ \i&i^ themselves. Their poverty presented a pitiful 
contrast with the luxury, the pomp, the magnificence, of 
the court of their Bourbon kings. England on the other hand had 
followed a very different policy. She was shut off from expansion at 
home, but the sea lay open to her. She had built uj) her navy and 
steadily extended her commercial activities into new lands; and 
while she had distributed political power among her people, she 
had sent forth her excess population to establish new Eng- 
lands beyond the seas. Her people, therefore, unlike the great 
mass of the French, were growing ever more resourceful, energetic, 
and capable of self-help. Hence, in all the early stages of the 
long struggle England had been successful, driving France 
out of India and North America, and setting barriers to French 
ambition at home. But at the end of the century, after a 
hundred years of bitter conflict, two events tlireatened to undo 
all that had been done and restore again the supremacy of France 
in Europe; the one was the American Eevolution, which cutoff 
half the territory of the British Empire and for the moment 
obscured the prestige which had been won by a hundred years of 
successful war; the other was the French Revolution, which 
aroused the French from the sleep of centuries, and threatened to 
bring them at a single bound alongside of the English. But 
France unfortunately for herself could not reorganize her navy as 
readily as she could reorganize her army, and on the seas England 
easily maintained her position. Moreover, even on the land, it 
was impossible for the French people to sustain for a long period 
the tremendous exertion which had won their first battles, and 
when the hectic energy of the great uprising had at last spent 
itself, France, doubly exhausted, sank into nerveless apathy. The 
end came ; France was again remanded to her old boundaries, and 
the supremacy of England as the great maritime and commercial 
power of the world was definitely secured. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE EASTERN QUESTIOX AND THE FIRST ERA OF REFORM 

GEORGE III., 1815-1820 
GEORGE ir., 1820-1830 
WILLIAM IV., 18.30-1837 
VICTORIA, 18.37-1841 

During the generation which preceded Waterloo English history 

had centered more and more in the great continental straggle. 

All questions of domestic reform, moral or political, 

Waterloo on ^^^ ^QQi'^ tabled by common consent and the energies 

^r'^^il-£!*^' of the nation been concentrated upon the one all 

1%C OJjVihiOiVo -*- 

engrossing topic, — the defeat of France and the over- 
throw of Napoleon. But at Waterloo the spell was broken; liber- 
alism, which had come to be regarded as unpatriotic, almost 
treason, began again to raise its head, and the people of Great 
Britain turned once more to consider the reforms which the 
French Revolution had arrested. 

The first signs of reaction appeared soon after Waterloo, as 
soon as the nation began to adjust itself to the new conditions 

created by the peace. If the war had arrested English 
distresT^ economic life in some directions, it had abnormally 
^"^aJe^^^ stimulated it in others. The productive activities of 

a great part of Europe had been paralyzed by the long 
struggle, and in spite of the Napoleonic decrees the demand for 
English goods and especially for English food-stuffs had continued 
to increase. The rising prices of grain had led many an English 
landlord to plough up pastures and turn into cultivation areas from 
which under ordinary conditions the yield would not be sufficient 
to pay the cost. With the dawn of peace, this unusual stimulus 
was lost; the continental armies were broken up and absorbed 
once more in the manifold callings of peace; Europe began 
again to provide for her wants herself, and England was left with 
millions of capital invested in enterjirises that were no longer 
remunerative. Stocks fell; values began to shrink ; concerns shut 

976 



1815-1817] THE CORK LAW 977 

down, and stagnation followed. Thousands were thrown out of 
work; other thousands who had been employed in the numerous 
activities more directly connected with the war, were thrown back 
upon England without means and without employment. 

The decline in the demand for grain and the inevitable shrink- 
age in land values had not been unforeseen, and in 1815 parliament, 
where the influence of the landlords was always strong, 
Law'ujfisis ^^^^ promptly passed a "Corn Law," by which the 
importation of foreign-grown grain was prohibited 
whenever the price of British wheat should fall below eighty shill- 
ings a quarter. When the price of British-grown wheat should 
fall below sixty-seven shillings a quarter, the importation of 
colonial wheat also was prohibited. This of course was class 
legislation of a most reprehensible kind; instead of forestalling 
the approaching distress parliament had merely shifted the burden 
of the "hard times" from the shoulders of those who were most 
able to bear it, the landlords, to the shoulders of those who were 
least able, the day laborers and the factory hands. 

A general failure of the crops in 1816 added greatly to the 
accumulating distress of the people. At eighty sliillhigs, foreign- 
grown grain was admitted, but the price of wheat 

Labor continued to rise until in 1817 it reached the almost pro- 

troubles. ... 

hibitive figure of ninety-six shillings a quarter. After 

two years of uncertain employment and low wages, in thousands 

of cases of no employment at all, the English laborer at last saw 

himself confronted with a bread famine. He could not, like the 

French peasant in the days of the great Louis, lie down and die ; 

and so he roused himself to mend matters, but in a blind, aimless 

way. Mobs of wretched farm hands burned the hoarded grain of 

the farmer ; other mobs of factory workers turned upon the better 

favored establishments, smashing the newly devised labor-saving 

machines which were regarded as responsible for the troubles of 

the laborer, and burning the plants. Monster meetings, also, 

were held at various places; fiery agitators incited the people 

against the government and the proprietary classes, and wild 

schemes were proposed of marching upon London and compelling 

parliament to redress the wrongs of the people. 



978 THE FIRST ERA OF REFORM [georqkIU. 

The old conservative ministry, which since 1812 had been 

directed by Robert Jenkinson, Lord Liverpool, was still in power. 

The ministers, who had not yet passed out from under 
The reforms , ■,,»,, . . ■ , t ■,^ i_i 

of Tories the spell 01 the grim memories associated with the 

French Eevolution, at first naturally thought only of 
repression. Meetings of ^'radicals" were branded as "seditious;" 
magistrates were instructed to arrest all persons accused of libel- 
ous publications, and in March 1817 the Habeas Corpus Act was 
suspended. Yet the party in power could not close their ears 
altogether to the cry of the people; the ministers soon saw that 
something more than simple repression was needed and in a char- 
acteristic° Tory fashion set to work. In 1817 they secured the 
removal of the disability which forbade Catholics and noncon- 
forming Protestants to hold commissions in the army; in 1818 
they appropriated £1,000,000 to the building of new churches; in 
1819 they secured a bill which provided for the resumption of 
specie payment in 1822. The Whigs with somewhat clearer 
insight into the causes of existing disorders directed their efforts 
to the reduction of the war burdens, which still rested heavily upon 
the necks of the middle and lower classes. In 1816 Brougham 
led a movement to compel the government to abandon the income 
tax which had been greatly increased as a war measure, but which 
the ministry wished to continue. The Whigs also attacked the 
repressive measures by which the ministry had sought to check 
the dissemination of political literature. The people quickly 
responded to these signs of sympathy among the Whig leaders, 
and in the general election of 1818 the Whigs could show consider- 
able gains in the counties and in boroughs such as London and 
Westminster, where the popular element had more direct control 
of the franchise. 

The more radical elements outside of parliament, however, 
were not satisfied with the slow pace of the regular Whig leaders. 
Pariiamen- ^^^^ ^^ clear visioii, like William Cobbett, the editor of 
^^Peterloo^' ^^^ Weekly Political Register, saw that under the 
^*^^- existing restricted franchise, it was useless to talk 

of relief, and sought to direct the present agitation toward 
securing parliamentary reform. Monster meetings were called 



1820] THE SIX ACTS 979 

in the unrepresented towns and the people were encouraged to 
elect what were called "Legislatorial Attorneys and Kepresenta- 
tives," who were to demand seats in parliament in the name of 
their constituents. The movement accomplished little more than 
to bring into prominence again the anomalies of the existing 
franchise. An unfortunate affair at Manchester, where some fifty- 
thousand people who had gathered in St. Peter's fields were 
stampeded by the military/ created widespread indignation and 
greatly quickened the awakening sympathies of the nation with 
the laboring classes. The government, however, felt justified in 
adopting still more vigorous measures of repression, and in 
December Lord Sidmouth, the Home Secretary, secured the pas- 
sage of the "Six Acts," the most important of which 
Acts-'^^^ provided that public meetings could be held only after 
six days' notice had been given to the resident Justice 
of the Peace and that none but freeholders or residents might 
attend under penalty of fine or imprisonment. Any meeting at 
which the people should be incited to hatred, or contempt of the 
king's person, or of the government, or of the constitution, was 
declared unlawful ; Justices were given special powers in dispersing 
such meetings or arresting the speakers, and were not to be held 
responsible for the results of any violence which they might see 
fit to use. It was also forbidden under penalty of two years' 
imprisonment to attend such a meeting with arms, flags, banners, 
or other emblems calculated to rouse the people. Organizations 
were forbidden to practice military drilling; magistrates were 
empowered to search for arms and seize them wherever found. 

In the midst of the turmoil poor old George III., now in his 
eighty-second year, passed away, and his son, the fourth of the 
Georges, who as regent had been virtually king since 
oeorgeiiL, 1812, Succeeded to the full honors of royalty. The 
George IV., ncw king was already heartily detested by the greater 
part of his people. He had spent his youth in dis- 
gusting dissipation; in 1795 he had married Caroline of Brunswick 

'Many of the people were injured in the crush; some were killed. 
The affair was called the massacre of "Peterloo," in imitation of "Water- 
loo." 



980 THE FIRST ERA OP REFORM [georqe iv. 

with the idea of turning his marriage to the payment of personal 
debts which he had accumulated to the amount of £800,000. No 
woman of spirit, however, could long endure such an utterly vic- 
ious character as the Prince of Wales, and soon after the birth of 
a daughter, the two had permanently separated. The public, 
for the most part, took the queen's side, and the unsuccessful 
efforts of the king to blacken her reputation sufficiently to 
induce parliament to grant him a divorce, added not a little to the 
increasing burden of his unpopularity. She died soon after the 
coronation in which her husband had denied her a part, wearied 
and broken by the struggle to secure a recognition that was 
rightfully hers. The king at the time was on a royal exhibition 
tour to Dublin. When he heard that death had been kinder to 
him- than his parliament, in his delight he got roaring drunk on 
"goose pie and whiskey;" when he arrived at Dublin he had to be 
helped to his lodgings. 

George had other evidences of the unpopularity of himself and 
his Tory ministry, even more disquieting than the mourning 
multitude that followed his dishonored wife to her 
the govern- grave. He had hardly begun his reign when Sidmouth 
unearthed a plot to murder the whole Tory ministry, 
fire the barracks, and raid the Bank and the Tower. Some six of 
the leaders were tried and executed in February. In April 
another radical plot was also foiled at Glasgow, where the revo- 
lutionists were taken with arms in their hands, and blood was shed. 

These affairs proved to the men who were responsible for the 
government the seriousness of the rumblings which they heard 
beneath their feet, and satisfied them that they could 
ized Ton"^ never allay the prevalent discontent by building churches 
lm!^i82f ^^^ enforcing the Six Acts. In 1821, therefore, some 
important changes were begun in the ministry. Sid- 
mouth, the Home Secretary, whose name had been identified with 
the Six Acts, gave way to Robert Peel, the only man among the old 
Tories with practical sense and clear intelligence sufficient to grasp 
the full meaning of present conditions. Canning, who also belonged 
to the liberal wing of the Tories but had left the ministry rather 
than mix himself up with the shameful attack of the king upon 



1815-1822] THE HOLY ALLIAISTCE 981 

Queen Caroline, was sought; but the most that the king would 
give him was the Governor-Generalship of India. But fortunately 
just as he was about to start for India, the suicide of Castlereagh, 
now Lord Londonderry, the old manager of the Commons, forced 
the king to turn to the only other Tory who could manage the 
House, and Canning once more entered the ministry as Secretary 
for Foreign Affairs and leader of the Commons. Huskisson 
became President of the Board of Trade; Frederick Eobinson, 
known as "Prosperity Robinson," because of his policy of always 
talking up prosperity, became Chancellor of the Exchequer; and 
Henry Temple, better known as Lord Palmerston, became Secre- 
tary at War. Liverpool remained nominally Prime Minister; but 
he was entirely overshadowed by the influence of Canning, whose 
liberal tendencies not only gave him the support of those Tories 
who still called Pitt their leader, but also of the moderate \yhigs, 
with whom in all questions except the one of parliamentary reform, 
Canning virtually stood upon common ground. These changes in 
the ministry gave the Liverpool administration and the Tory party 
a new lease of life, and under the wise leadership of Canning, Peel, 
and Huskisson, entirely reversed the older reactionary policy of 
Liverpool, abroad withdrawing England from the support of the 
repressive policy which the powers had formally adopted, at home 
reopening the question of Catholic Emancipation, freeing trade 
from the foolish restrictions which class interests had thrown 
around it, and completely reforming the whole spirit of English 
criminal law. 

After the second fall of Napoleon the work of the Congress of 
Vienna was resumed at Paris, and Europe was finally adjusted to 

the new conditions. Italy was turned over to its petty 
and the Holy despots ; Milan and Venice were given to Austria whose 

help was necessary to keep the newly restored crowns 
ujDon the unsteady heads of the Italian monarchs. In Germany, 
also, some important changes were made, although it was not 
possible to restore the old empire or the medieval institutions 
which Napoleon had swept away. Hanover was given back to the 
English king; and Prussia in compensation, was allowed to extend 
in the region of the lower Rhine. The German States were united 



982 THE PIRST ERA OF REFORM [george IV. 

into a loose confederation which included both Prussia and Aus- 
tria with a capital at Frankfurt. The Grand Duchy of Warsaw 
was assigned to the Czar under tlie promise of a constitution. 
Holland and Belgium were united into the kingdom of the Nether- 
lands with the Prince of Orange for king. Subsequently the sover- 
eigns of Russia, Austria, and Prussia, had invited the other princes 
of Europe to join them in the famous "Holy Alliance" for the pur- 
pose of exercising a sort of protectorate over the domestic affairs 
of the weaker states and assuring the recognition of "Christian 
principles" in the government of Europe. But unfortunately, 
with Metternich, the reactionary minister of Austria, for high 
priest, the new princely cult under the specious cant of enforcing 
Christian principles had become simply a league of the despotic 
governments of Europe against the liberal tendencies of the new 
nationalism which had been born of the Napoleonic "Wars. Cas- 
tlereagh had refused to enter the x\lliance, but assured Metternich 
and Nesselrode, the Eussian minister, that England would not 
interfere with them in carrying out its purpose. 

When Canning became Foreign Secretary the Holy Alliance 
had been working its will in Europe, unchecked for seven years. 
Fortified by the specious maxim, that with those "whom 
Canning and God had rendered responsible for power" lay the sole 
Alliance. right of making changes in the legislation or adminis- 
tration of states, the leaguing powers had not only 
stamped out any reappearance of liberalism in their own domin- 
ions, but had dispatched armies to overthrow the newly established 
constitutions of Italy and Spain, and were seriously meditating 
an interference in Portugal, which had imitated the example of 
Spain in adopting a free constitution, and in the Spanish- Ameri- 
can colonies, where the people had taken advantage of the dis- 
tractions of the mother country to declare their independence. 
Canning at once set his face against the further recognition of the 
dangerous doctrine of the right of any prince or group of princes 
to interfere in the domestic concerns of an independent people. 
The mischief in Italy was already done; but he commissioned 
Wellington to protest at the Congress of Verona against any 
further interference of the powers in Spain, and when his protest 



1821-1829] THE GEEEK EEVOLT 983 

was ignored, he proceeded to recognize the Spanish-American 
Eepublics. 

The death of John VI., the constitutional king of Portugal, gave 

Canning the opportunity of interfering still mpre vigorously with 

the plans of the Holy Alliance. Don Pedro, the eldest 

terf&refin^ son of John and heir to the vacant throne, had put 

Portugal, himself at the head of a successful movement for estab- 

lo4o, 

lishing the independence of Brazil, and having no wish 
to give up his American empire, he assigned the Portuguese 
crown to his seven year old daughter under the regency of his 
sister Isabella. Don Miguel, however, a second son of the recent 
king, under the inspiration of the restored absolutist prince of 
Spain, began a struggle for the overthrow of the liberal govern- 
ment in his own interests. On Friday, the 18th of December, news 
reached Canning of the new turn of affairs in Portugal ; and on 
Tuesday following, "the troops of England were on their march for 
embarkation." As a result of this vigorous show of teeth the 
Spaniards withdrew, and the liberal government of Portugal for 
the time was saved. 

The almost contemporary uprising of Greece against Turkish 
despotism afforded Canning still another opportunity of putting 

his new foreign policy in force. In Italy and Spain the 
The Greek object of popular Uprisings had been constitutional 
Revolt, 1821-29. reform ; but in Greece, as in South America, the object 

had been national independence. Greece, moreover, in 
a peculiar way appealed to the romantic sentiment of Europe ; her 
struggle recalled that other heroic struggle of the ancient days 
when Greece stood almost alone as the outer bulwark of Europe 
against Asiatic conquest. The Greeks, also, were a Christian 
people; the Turkish rule was notoriously corrupt and cruel. The 
contest, moreover, was pitifully unequal; the Greeks were poor, 
without organization, without arms, and without a navy. The 
peculiar formation of their country, the deep indentations from 
the sea, the narrow isthmus and the many islands, afforded 
Turkey every possible opportunity to use her ships to the best 
advantage and concentrate her troops at will, while it prevented any 
concerted action on the part of the many fragments of the Greek 



984 THE FIRST ERA OF REFORM [geobgk IV. 

people. In their despair the Greeks appealed to Czar Alexander, 
whose support they might expect by reason of the religious sym- 
pathy of the Eussians as fellow members of the Greek Church. 
Bnt Alexander was too deeply committed to the cause of reaction- 
ary despotism, to heed the cry of his suffering co-religionists, and 
in heartless words that were inspired by Metternich, replied, 
"The sovereigns are determined to discountenance rebellion, 
however and whenever it shows itself." It Avas impossible, how- 
ever, to stifle the generous sentiment of the people of Europe. 
Greek unions were formed; money was freely contributed to the 
support of the patriots, and individuals hastened to offer their 
lives and their fortunes to the cause of Greek freedom. Among 
these was the wayward poet, George Gordon Byron, who forsook a 
vicious and useless life in Italy to die a hero's death among the 
fever stricken swamps of Missolonghi. Thomas Cochrane, the 
soldier of fortune who had retired from defeat and disgrace at 
home to take part in the Spanish-American wars, also went to 
Greece to assist her in organizing her infant navy. The English 
government displayed its sympathy by recognizing the Greeks as 
belligerents. 

The death of Alexander in 1825 and the succession of his 
brother Nicholas T. put a new aspect on the relations of the powers 

to the affairs of Greece. Nicholas, who had little sym- 
ofthepow- pathy with his brother's idea of government by "Chris- 
Treatyof tian principles," and who saw the possible advantage 

of an extension of Eussian influence in southeastern 
Europe at the expense of Turkey, eagerly accepted Canning's 
offer to unite in a Joint demand upon Turkey in order to force 
her to accept mediation. The Sultan, however, while willing to put 
off the powers by vague promises, had no thought of stopping the 
progress of his lieutenant, the Egyptian prince Ibrahim Pasha, 
who was engaged, not in conquering, but in exterminating the popu- 
lation of the Morea. The powers saw that if Greece were to be 
saved, something more serious than an offer of mediation must be 
attempted, and on July 6, 1827, England, Eussia, and France 
entered into the Treaty of London by which they agreed to insist 
upon an armistice and intervene by force if necessary. A powerful 



1838] CAN^SriNG'S POLICY 985 

allied fleet under the command of the English Admiral Codrington 
was sent to the coast of Messinia, with the curious instructions 
to enforce an armistice by cannon shot but "not in a hostile 
spirit." Codrington persuaded Ibrahim to agree to a truce for 
twenty days, but it was not so easy to control the wild spirits 
which the war of extermination had unchained. Cochrane and 
his band of Greek patriots paid little attention to the armistice, 
and when Ibrahim heard of the fall of Patras he once more let 
loose his savage Egyptians upon the Peloponnesus. Codrington 
acted promptly, and on the 20th of October sailed into the Bay of 
Navarino, where lay the combined Turkish-Egyptian fleet of 
"sixty men of war," carrying twice the armament of the allied 
squadron. An accident brought on a general action and the 
Turkish fleet was annihilated. The overwhelming success of 
Codrington, however, the unexpected thoroughness of his work, was 
hardly regarded by the western powers with satisfaction. The 
English ministry, weakened by the recent death of Canning, 
seemed appalled at the results of its friendly intentions, and the 
king by the inspiration of Wellington, the new premier, spoke of 
Navarino as "a m.ost untoward event." England, in fact, had at 
last awakened to the possible results of the growth of Russian 
influence in the eastern Mediterranean, and the ministers were 
inclined to forget the justice of the cause of the Greeks, in a rising 
suspicion of the ulterior motives of Nicholas. England and France, 
therefore, refused to interfere further, but Russia had no thought of 
retiring from the conflict. In August 1829 she dispatched her 
first army across the Balkans, and in September, in the Treaty 
of Adrianople, compelled Turkey to grant the independence of 
Greece. 

The battle of Navarino was fought on October 20, 1828. 

Canning had died on August 8. His work, however, was done. 

He had protected and fostered the rising spirit of 

Results of or 

Canning's nationalism on the continent. He had saved Europe 
from the reactionary influence of the Holy Alliance, 
which at one time had included every Christian power in Europe 
except Great Britain and the pope. He had restored Great 
Britain to her old controlling position in European politics. His 



986 THE FIEST ERA OF REFORM [geokge IV. 

motives were undoubtedly inspired by English interests, as when 
by coming to the support of the United States in upholding 
the Monroe Doctrine, he effectually checked the designs of the 
Holy Alliance, of Russia in particular, upon the new world. Yet 
whatever his motive, the results were sound and lasting; the open 
door was not to be again closed to Europe. 

While Canning had been upholding the cause of liberal ideas 
abroad, his liberal Tory colleagues were steadily pushing forward 

the cause of conservative reform at home, doing all 
Theiiherai that Tories could do to cure the industrial and social 
SimT"^' ills of the era, and still remain Tories. Peel, the able 

Home Secretary, would not support Canning in his 
desire to secure Catholic Emancipation ; yet by moderate admin- 
istration and sensible economic reforms, he did much to allay 
the existing irritation and prepare the way for a better understand- 
ing, especially between the middle and lower classes. His influence 
was particularly felt in the reformation of the criminal laws of 
England, in which he abolished barbarous punishments and limited 
the death penalty to serious offenses. Eobinson, the Chancellor 
of the Exchequer, and Huskisson, the farsighted President of 
the Board of Trade, were moving forward in the direction of 
greater freedom of labor and trade. The incessant irritation 
which the progress of industrial revolution had caused between 
capital and labor, had led to the enactment of many unjust laws, " 
by which combinations of workingmen had been forbidden and 
the migration of the laborer to seek work or better wages ham- 
pered. In 1824 many of these laws were repealed. In 1825 the 
right of labor to organize in self-defense was recognized in a law 
which attempted to distinguish between legal and illegal com- 
binations. Huskisson in particular was seeking to realize Pitt's 
dream of a free commercial policy for England. In 1823 he got 
through his "Keciprocity of Duties Bill" by which equality of 
trade was offered to the ships of all nations who would grant the 
same to Great Britain. The act greatly lessened the restraining 
influence of the old Navigation Acts, which were still in force, and 
opened the way for a wider application of the doctrine of free 
trade. 



1823-1837] EKD OF LIVERPOOL MINISTRY 987 

The liberal sympathies of the later Liverpool ministry are also 

to be seen in its attitude toward the old question of slavery. Men 

began to see that economically slavery was a mistake. 

The Liver- In 1823 an attempt was made to prevent the floffginff 

pool ministry oo o 

mid slavery, of women. The West Indian planters protested and 

talked wildly of independence. Eiots followed in 
Barbadoes and other places. John Smith, a Congregational mis- 
sionary and a friend of the negroes, was imprisoned and left to die 
in jail; the planters sent home a petition that no new missionaries 
be sent out, and protested against any attempt to educate the 
negroes. The result of the agitation was greatly to increase aboli- 
tion sentiment in England; it gave a new life to the movement that 
lesulted ten years later in the abolition of slavery throughout the 
colonies of the British Empire. 

The years 1834 and 1835 saw a great revival of prosperity. But 
unfortunately the hopefulness of trade soon outran discretion. 

Overeager investors rushed into speculations which con- 
cT^Ms!^^ ^^"' ditions did not justify, and it was not long before the 

crash came. Many banks failed, and the renewed dis- 
tress of the poor brought on another series of riots and attempts at 
breaking up the machinery of which the laboring classes were ever 
jealous. The harvest of 1836, also, proved to be a failure, and 
added greatly to the distress of the poor, in so much that the gov- 
ernment seriously contemplated the suspension of the corn laws. 

In February 1837 ill health had compelled Liverpool to retire, 
and Canning had conti-nued the administration "on the lines of 

enlightened Toryism" until his own death in the fol- 

Goderic/i, and lowing August. The king then first tried "Prosperity 
Wellington o o o ± j 

Prime ' Eobinson," now Lord Goderich, whose nicknames had 
apparently kept pace with his titles, and who was now 
known as "Goody Goderich." Goderich, however, was a weak 
man and proved utterly unable to manage the conflicting elements 
of his cabinet. In January the king turned to a very different 
man, and invited Wellington to form a ministry. Wellington and 
Peel had broken with Canning upon the question of Catholic 
Emancipation, but the new ministry could not do without the 
support of the Canning Tories. Canning's old friends, therefore, 



988 THE FIRST ERA OF REFORM [george IV. 

Huskisson, Palmerston, Grant, and Lamb, remained in possession 
of their offices, and the question of Catholic Emancipation was 
left open for each minister to consider as he saw fit. 

The new ministry thus started out tacitly committed to the 
liberal policy of Canning. But Wellington had really little sym- 
pathy with Canning's position and had no idea of 
Split in the dropping into the place of nonentity that Liverpool 

Tovu VQJllhS X J. o X J X 

1828. ' had held so long. When, therefore, Huskisson made 
the statement at Liverpool that "he had positive 
pledges that His Grace would tread in all respects in the footsteps 
of Mr. Canning," the duke angrily resented the assumption of his 
subordinate to outline his policy for him. The opening breach in 
the Tory ranks was still further aided in February by the success- 
ful attempt of Lord John Eussell to push through the Commons a 
proposal to repeal the old Test and Corporation Acts. The Can- 
ningites voted against their colleagues, and Peel saved the minis- 
try only by bringing forward as a compromise, a modified form of 
the Test Act, which prescribed instead of the old test, a simple 
declaration in which the maker promised "on the faith of a Chris- 
tian, never to injure or subvert the Established Church." The 
principle implied in the repeal was thus recognized; and Dissen- 
ters, after a struggle of one hundred and fifty years were at last 
accorded the legal right to hold civil office. 

The Tory ministry had been saved by the tact of Peel, but even 
his ingenuity could not devise compromises enough to hold such 
ill-assorted elements together when they met the grand 
hvnj^Beform *^^"^^^ °^ Parliamentary Reform. The general election 
of 1826 had been marked by shamefully corrnpt 
methods, the most flagrant offenders being the boroughs of 
Penryn and East Retford. In the latter each elector was accus- 
tomed to receive- forty guineas, besides having free access "for 
refreshment" to public houses kept open by the candidates. At 
Penryn the candidates had attempted to abate the nuisance by 
directing "the town crier to declare that the practice previously 
resorted to of making the electors 'comfortable' would be discon- 
tinued." But the electors became sulky and refused to vote at 
all, unless they could have their accustomed "comforts." The 



1827-1829] CATHOLIC EMAN-CIPATION" 989 

liberals in parliament took the matter up, and in 1827 and 1828 
bills were presented which proposed to disfranchise East Eetford 
and Penryn altogether and give their seats to Manchester and 
Birmingham. The Penryn Bill passed the Commons but was 
thrown out by the Lords. On the East Retford Bill the Can- 
ningites took a determined stand against Wellington and Peel, 
and Huskisson at once put his resignation in the hands of his 
chief. His friends, Palmerston, Lamb, Grant, and Dudley, fol- 
lowed him. Wellington was thus left alone with Peel to organize 
his ministry upon purely high Tory lines. 

Wellington was now supreme in his ministry and he ruled it 
as he had ruled his aides on the battlefield. "The duke is king of 

England," declared George TV. But supreme as the 
Catholic duke might be at his Council Board, he could not control 
tiMni829?^' the elements of reform that were gathering without. 

The Act of Lord Russell, which had relieved Dissenters 
from the annoyance of the Test Act, naturally suggested the 
relief of the other wing of the Christian community, who since 
the days of the early Stuarts had suffered under still more grievous 
laws ; and in May, Francis Burdett offered a measure for the 
relief of Catholics. The bill succeeded in the Commons, but 
failed in the Lords. It was impossible, however, to let the matter 
rest here. In 1823 Daniel O'Connell had organized the "Catholic 
Association" for the purpose of securing the Emancipation of 
Catholic Ireland. In 1825 the association had been suppressed. 
O'Connell, however, had managed to hold the members together, 
and when, three years later, the prohibition was removed, the 
influence of the association became stronger than ever, and 
O'Connell seized the first opportunity of showing the government its 
strength. In 1828 Fitzgerald, a member from County Clare, was 
appointed President of the Board of Trade and in accordance with 
the law, had to vacate his seat and stand again for reelection. 
O'Connell, however, chose to stand for the vacant seat and was 
returned by a triumphant majority. But O'Connell was a 
Catholic and could not legally sit in parliament. Here then was 
a serious issue presented, and the government had to choose 
between putting Ireland under martial law or removing the cause 



990 THE PIRST ERA OF REFORM [william IV. 

of discontent. With the growing popularity of the idea of Catho- 
lic Emancipation in England, with Whigs and Canningites united 
to support it, Wellington and Peel determined to make a virtue 
of necessity and lead their party in undertaking the necessary 
reform. As the measure came from the hands of Peel it substi- 
tuted for the old oaths of supremacy, allegiance, and abjuration, 
a new form, which a Catholic might take without doing violence 
to his conscience, admitting him to membership in corporations, 
and to all political offices except those of Eegent, Lord Chancellor 
in England or Ireland, and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. As a 
conservative safe guard the' qualification of an elector in Ireland 
was raised from forty shillings to ten pounds. The bill readily 
passed the Commons, but was carried through the Lords only by 
the influence of Wellington.^ 

Wellington was now to sufEer the fate of a leader who in drift- 
ing from old party moorings severs himself from old friends but 
does not go far enough to win new friends. The high 
Fall of the Tories could not forgive him for his support of Catho- 
ministry!^'^ lic Emancipation ; the Canningites were ofPended by his 
treatment of Huskisson, and the Whigs disliked his 
reversal of Canning's foreign policy in allowing Don Miguel to 
a(!Complish his scheme of usurpation in Portugal. The death of 
George IV. in June 1830 and the succession of his popular 
brother, as William IV., whose democratic sympathies were well 
known, also encouraged the gathering forces of reform. In July 
Charles X,, the last of the Bourbons, was driven from France, and 
a liberal government instituted in the name of the constitutional 
king, Louis Philippe. The orderliness and moderation of the new 
French revolution, in such marked contrast with the wild excesses 
of the first revolution, did much to disarm the suspicions of the 
conservative classes of reformatory measures, while the distress of 
the poorer classes of the great manufacturing districts called 
renewed attention to the inconsistencies of the English representa- 
tive system. When, therefore, in the autumn of 1830, at the 
opening of the first parliament of William IV., in response to a 
motion of Lord Grey, Wellington reasserted his opposition to 

^ Lee Source Book, pp. 497-513. 



1830] PARLIAMEJSTTAET REFORM 991 

reform, and his confidence in the existing legislative system, it 
was understood that the fall of the Wellington ministry was at 
hand. Before the end of the following month the resignations 
were received. 

Lord Charles Grey, the veteran Whig champion of parliamen- 
tary reform, who had presented his first reform measure thirty- 
seven years before, was summoned to form a ministry. 
fafulrfann Huskisson had been recently killed in an accident at the 
Home^'lssi opening of the Manchester and Liverpool railway, but 
the other Canningites, Goderich, Palmerston, and 
Lamb, now Viscount Melbourne, were invited to places as a mat- 
ter of coarse, while the Whigs were represented by Althorp, Kus- 
sell, and Brougham. The ministry, therefore, to all intents was 
not only a Whig ministry, but was pledged to the cause of parlia- 
mentary reform, and Eussell was instructed at once to prepare a 
sketch for a proper bill. On March 1, 1831 the bill was presented 
to parliament; it was supported, as Grey declared, by "the unani- 
mous consent of the whole government." It proposed to disfran- 
chise sixty English boroughs, deprive forty-seven others of one 
member each, and distribute among the larger towns and counties 
the seats that should be gained . It proposed, also, to allow hold- 
ers of houses of £10 a year rental value to elect to parliament 
in place of the corporations which had heretofore enjoyed the 
exclusive franchise in most English towns. Comprehensive^as the 
bill was, however, it did not satisfy the extreme radicals who were 
already raising a cry for manhood suffrage; the Tories received 
it with shouts of derision. On the 21st of March, in a House in 
which 603 members voted, the bill was saved on the second read- 
ing by one vote, only to be lost in the committee. The ministry, 
however, was strong in the support of the good natured, simple- 
hearted, and affable king, who was deeply touched by the suffer- 
ings of his people and really wanted to have something done. 
It was strong, also, in the support of the counties and of those 
boroughs where the more democratic franchise prevailed. The 
opposition was naturally entrenched in the rotten boroughs which 
were fighting for life; some of which, as Old Sarum or Gatton, 
had lost their ancient population altogether, yet continued to 



992 THE FIRST ERA OF REFORM [william iv. 

send representatives to parliament. The ministry determined to 
appeal to the country, and on April 22 the king prorogued parlia- 
ment as the first step towards dissolution. 

As the ministry had foreseen it swept the comities and larger 
boroughs ; a second bill was speedily brought forward, and in spite 

of long and tedious tactics of delay on the part of the 
torlmfm^^ opposition, passed the Commons by a vote of three 
'l,q^is'\^3i ti^^iidrsd and forty- five to two hundred and thirty-six. 

The attitude of the Lords was still doubtful ; their con- 
servative sympathies, however, were known, and to fortify the 
popular cause sixteen new peers had been created in hope of 
diminishing the hostile majority. The bishops, however, almost 
to a man were opposed to any change in the existing order, and 
when the vote was taken, of the forty-one votes of the hostile 
majority, twenty-one were from the church. 

In the meanwhile the agitation of the public had continued to 
increase in extent and violence. The fashion of forming "Political 

Unions," or societies, in which the middle and lower 
Public inter- classcs leagued for the agitation of reform, had extended 

est in par- o ° ' 

reform"'^^ to all the greater towns; fervid orators began to talk 
of using physical force, and vague hints were thrown 
out. of the possibility of raising armies. At Birmingiiam on 
October 3 the people declared that they would refuse to pay taxes 
if the bill were thrown out by the Lords. In Bristol an infuriated 
mob attacked the carriage of the Tory Justice Wetheral, who had 
come to the city to hold the assizes, and gave further evidence 
of the popular displeasure by destroying the bishop's palace, the 
Custom House, and the Excise Office. The military tried to dis- 
perse the mob, and in the struggle twelve people were killed and 
nearly a hundred wounded; the commandant, Colonel Brereton, 
committed suicide. In November an attempt was made to unite 
the many political unions by organizing at London a "National 
Union" and inviting all the individual unions to send up deputies. 
But even the Whig government now became alarmed and warned 
the leaders to desist. 

In December parliament resumed its sitting; the Commons 
at once began upon a third bill, and pushed it through the 



1822] THE REFORM BILL CARRIED 993 

preliminary stages before the Christmas holidays. It reached 

the third reading on March 23 and in April appeared in the 

Lords. Here the fight was carried on with renewed 

The third 

buiinthe bitterness. Lord Grey fonght for the measure to 
which he had given his life, devoting to the struggle 
all the powers of that "lofty and animated eloquence" of which 
he was such a master, Wellington on the other hand rallied 
against it all the conservative sympathies of the aristocracy; even 
the king seemed to waver. Yet in the face of the continued oppo- 
sition the courage of the Lords was not equal to the strain, and on 
April 14 allowed the bill to pass the second reading by a majority 
of nine votes. The victory, however, was not yet won. On May 7 
Lord Lyndhurst proposed to postpone the disfranchising of the 
small boroughs, and carried his point by a majority large enough 
to threaten the final success of the bill. 

Beyond the walls of parliament the agitation increased with 

each lengthening moment of suspense. A gathering of Unions 

was held at Birmingham in which it was estimated that 

BUi^SseT ^^® hundred and fifty thousand people were present. 

the Lords, ^{-^q y^gt concoursc was wrought up to the point of 

June 4, 1832. ° ^ ^ ^_ ^ 

violence ; men talked freely of the ultimate extinction 
of the privileged orders if the bill should be rejected; and a 
proposition to march upon London was formally approved by 
resolution. The ministry, in the meanwhile, as a last resort 
was bringing pressure to bear upon the king to induce him to 
create enough new peers, about fifty, to swamp the opposition in 
the Lords. Before such a step, which Wellington declared would 
be the end of the constitution, the king hesitated; Grey 
promptly resigned. The king then turned to Wellington and 
offered him the premiership, on condition that he would undertake 
some kind of reform. Wellington gave his word, but after a week 
spent in a futile effort to form a ministry, gave up the task and 
the king was obliged once more to return to Lord Grey. Grey 
again assumed office, but he had first exacted from the king a 
written pledge to create a sufficient number of new peers to carry 
the bill. The threat, however, was all that was needed ; Welling- 
ton accompanied by a large body of the peers withdrew, and the 



994 THE FIRST ERA OF REFORM [ Willi am IV. 

bill received the nominal assent of the Lords by a vote of 106 
to 22. 

As the Reform Bill finally passed, fifty-six boroughs that had 

a population of less than two thousand were totally disfranchised; 

thirty-two boroughs that had a population of less than 

Tlie Bill. i ± 

four thousand were allowed one member each. One 
hundred and forty-three seats were thus released. They were 
redistributed among twenty-two newly created boroughs em- 
powered to return two members each, and twenty-one to return 
one each; sixty -five seats were divided among the counties, and 
thirteen were left to be assigned to Scotland and Ireland. The 
ancient irregular borough franchise was displaced by a new £10 
household franchise, but resident freemen who had possessed the 
franchise before 1831 were allowed to retain their votes. In the 
counties tlie franchise was extended to copyholders and lease- 
holders, and to tenants at will who paid a rental of at least £50 a 
year. The time to be given to a county election was reduced from 
fifteen to two days ; borough elections were reduced to one day. 
Bills were also passed by which, of the seats reserved for Scotland 
and Ireland, Scotland received eight and Ireland received five. 
The franchise was remodelled in both countries upon lines some- 
what similar to those adopted in England. 

Thus another great stride had been taken in the progress of 
representative government. The Revolution of 1688 had settled 
Co titu- ^^® position of the king in the new constitution, but it 
nincanceof ^^^^ ^^^^ parliament virtually in the hands of a limited 
hill oligarchy, independent of the nation and out of touch 

with the great middle class. The Reform of 1832 dethroned the 
oligarchy and transferred the control of parliament to the farmers 
and shopkeepers. The workingmen, however, the great laboring 
class, who had done so much to force the issue upon the government, 
were apparently farther from the goal than ever. Yet much had 
been gained ; the absurd inconsistencies and inequalities of the 
old borough system had been swept away, and Englishmen of the 
same social grade everywhere enjoyed the same political privileges. 
It was much, also, that the right of the great middle class had 
been formally recognized. The Whigs protested that the act was 



1832] THE IRISH TITHE WAR 995 

final, that no further approach towards a political recognition of 
the democracy was to be thought of; and yet in the continued 
spread of democratic ideas, with the majority of the people of 
Great Britain still disfranchised, in the nature of things, the 
Reform of 1832 could not be a finality; it could not be more than 
a stage in the advance to full manhood suffrage. 

The results of the election of 1832 were anxiously awaited by 
all parties. The new limit of two days for the county election 

placed a decided check on rioting and drunkenness, 
EUction of and proved a helpful feature of the Eeform Act. Some 

"new men," notably Cobbett, the agitator, and Gully, 
an ex-prizefighter, were returned; but on the whole the election 
justified the extension of the franchise to the middle classes in 
spite of the sneer of Richard Grenville at what he was pleased to 
call "the presumption, impertinence, and self sufficiency of the 
new members." 

The energy which the Reform Bill agitation had called out, 
was by no means spent, and the ministers soon found themselves 

confronted with a list of serious and far reaching issues 
The iriffh ' which their position as reform leaders compelled them 

^' Tithe, War.'" 

to consider. The state of Ireland naturally first 
claimed attention, where a "Tithe War" had sprung up as a 
result of the refusal of the Irish peasantry to pay longer the rates 
which were prescribed by law for the support of the Anglican 
clergy. The extreme destitution increased the difficulty and the 
collection of tithes had become quite impossible. A "Coercion 
Act" was proposed and passed in spite of O'Connell's opposition. 
The act gave special powers to the officers of the law in order to 
repress the lawlessness which in parts of Ireland had created almost 
a reign of terror. This was followed by a "Church Bill" which 
attempted to diminish the burdens of the people by cutting down 
the number of Irish bishops and reducing the incomes of the 
remaining; it also held out hope of the final extinction of the 
tithe system. 

The slavery question, demanded the attention of the reform 
parliament. Stanley, the chief secretary for Ireland, whose 
policy of "a quick succession of kicks and kindness," had made 



996 THE FIKST ERA OF KEFOKM [ 



VV11.LIAM IV. 



him thoroughly detested by the Irish people, was transferred 
to the Colonial Office where he foimd ample opportunity to exer- 
cise liis fiery spirit in handling the slave question. He 
Abolition of came before parliament with a proposition to redeem 
^wMst, the slaves by paying their owners £20,000,000. The 

act was to take effect April 1, 1834. The reform 
parliament was strongly abolitionist; and the passionate eloquence 
of Stanley in picturing the cruelties and injustice which charac 
terized slavery in the colonies, aided by Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, 
upon whose shoulders had fallen the mantle of Wilberforce, mot a 
ready response, and in August 1833 the "Emancipation Act" 
became a law. "Wilberforce lived to hear of the second reading 
of the bill ; he died July 29. 

The relief of the black slave could not fail to call attention to 

the sufferings of the white slaves at home, the tens of thousands 

of British children who were toiling out their lives to 

FactoTii 

leijisiation, enrich English investors. Some attempts at improving 
the condition of factory children had been made in 
1802, and again in 1819. But the act of 1833, presented by 
Lord Ashley, known as the "Third Factory Act," differed from the 
others in that it applied to all industries, forbidding the employ- 
ment of children under nine years of age altogether, and of women 
or of young people under eighteen, for more than twelve hours a 
day. Provisions, also, were to be made for the education of 
factory children. 

Another measure introduced by the Grey ministry proposed 
changes in the Poor Laws. A commission of inquiry had been 
appointed in 1832, and its report, received in 1834, 
LawAmend- ^^V^J provcd the Urgent need of reform. An act of 
mentAct," 1796 had provided for giving individual relief to the 
poor. The laborer's wages were thus eked out by a 
pittance from the government. The greed of the manufacturers, 
however, soon found a way to take advantage of the charity of the 
government and by paying only pauper wages made it impossible 
for an independent worker to live at all. The effect of such 
legislation was to encourage pauperism and steadily increase the 
burden to the state, until in 1833 the total cost of poor relief 



1834] FALL OF THE EEFORM MINISTRY 997 

exceeded eight million pounds, a grievous burden for a population 
of fourteen million. The new law virtually returned to principles 
laid down in Elizabeth's reign; it drew a line between poverty 
and pauperism, and sought to relieve the former without creating 
the latter. Parishes were combined into unions with one work- 
house, instead of several and relief was given as a rule only to those 
who were destitute and willing to submit to the test of going to 
the workhouse for it. This measure reduced the poor rates by 
upwards of three million pounds in three years. 

Meanwhile the influence of the Grey ministry had already 

begun to wane. Few ministries have ever been more useful; 

none have ever introduced so many sensible reforms 

theOrey in SO short a time. It had not only successfully 

'}7lifTl'iS tvil. 

handled the question of parliamentary reform, the Irish 
question, the slavery question, the factory question, and the Poor 
Laws; it had also reconstructed the Bank of England, and renewed 
the East India Company's charter for twenty years, and had 
ended its commercial monopoly by throwing the China trade ^ open 
to all competitors. Abroad, also, the policy of Palmerston, the For- 
eign Secretary, had been quite as successful. The reforms, however, 
which the ministry had inaugurated at home had been too heroic; 
they had followed each other with such bewildering rapidity, 
that public opinion began to take alarm and the conservative 
elements gathered new strength. Grey, moreover, had a feeling 
that his work was done; he was weary of office, and in July 1834 
formally tendered his resignation. The king turned to Peel; but 
Peel was sufficiently shrewd to see that the Tories were not yet 
strong enough to support him, and the Grey ministry was allowed 
to remain with William Lamb, Viscount Melbourne, as Premier. 
The arrangement, however, could only be temporary ; the Whigs 
were breaking up into as many factions as there were new ideas to 
be exploited in the heads of the various leaders. And when in 
November Althorp resigned to take the place opened to him in 
the House of Lords by the death of his father. Earl Spencer, the 
king determined to dismiss the Whig ministry altogether, and 
turned again to Eobert Peel. 

^ The Indian trade had been thrown open in 1813. 



998 THE FIRST EEA OF REFORM [william iv. 

The first measure of the new minister was to secure the dis- 
missal of the reform parliament, in order to gain for his adminis- 
tration the advantage of the rising reactionary sympa- 
ministry] thies of the nation. In the "Tam worth Manifesto," 
he announced as his policy, conservative reform. The 
manifesto was greeted with general satisfaction, and there were 
some gains in the counties, but when the new parliament met in 
February 1835, it was evident that Peel was still confronted by 
a determined majority. The Liberals, moreover, whether Whigs, 
or Kadicals, were angry at the dismissal of the Melbourne min- 
istry; they regarded the act as arbitrary and without justifica- 
tion. The leaders entered into a formal compact at the house 
of Lord Lichfield to avenge themselves for the affront, and 
steadily defeated every reform measure which Peel introduced. 
With such an opposition, the speedy overthrow of Peel was a 
foregone conclusion. The day had gone by when a minister could 
hope to maintain himself in the face of a determined majority 
simply because he was the king's choice. After a brave fight of 
six weeks Peel gave up the struggle and resigned. 

The defeat of Peel and the refusal of Grey to form a ministry 

forced on William the bitter necessity of recalling Melbourne to 

office, with Palmerston as Foreign Secretary and Rus- 

Meibourne's gg^i ^g Home Secretary and leader of the Commons. 

second mm- •' 

*«^n/, iS35- As SO organized the ministry was not strong; and yet 
it worthily addressed itself to the work of completing 
the cycle of reforms which has made the reign of William IV. 
famous, but with which William himself had so little to do. The act 
of 1832 had left the corporations of the old boroughs in the hands 
of the self-elected ring, who, though deprived of their electoral 
monopoly, still administered local affairs to their own profit or pleas- 
ure. Another act, therefore, was necessary to complete the act of 
1832, and in 1835 parliament transferred the control of borough 
government from the corporations to representatives elected by 
the resident ratepayers; they applied the measure to one hundred 
and seventy-eight boroughs. London, however, was not included. 
Measures for the reform of municipalities and the tithe system in 
Ireland were also proposed in the Commons but defeated in the 



1837-1840] ACCESSIOK OF VICTORIA 999 

Lords. A Tithe Commutation Act for England, which permitted 
the commutation of tithes in kind into a money payment, succeeded 
better. The same year the division lists of the House of Com- 
mons were published for the first time by the House itself. 

In June 1837 William IV. died and was succeeded by Victoria, 

the daughter of George III. 's fourth son, the duke of Kent. In 

Hanover, the law allowed the crown to pass to male 

Queen Vic- hcirs oulv, SO that Emest Duke of Cumberland, the 

tOTiiTt IS ?7 

fifth son of George III., succeeded to the continental 
possessions of the House of Hanover; and Hanover once more 
swung clear of its connection with the English crown. Victoria 
had just passed her eighteenth birthday; her youth, her grace, 
her dignity, the essential goodness of her character, appealed 
powerfully to the patriotism and sympathy of all her subjects. 
Her accession was received with universal enthusiasm. She 
regarded Melbourne, moreover, with confidence and filial affection; 
so that the change of rulers added somewhat to the strength of 
the Whig ministry ; the ministers at least were no longer harassed 
by the hostility of William IV. 

In November the young queen met her first parliament. Her 
opening address called attention to the condition of Canada and 
Ireland, where affairs had for some time worn a serious aspect. 
The troubles in Canada were political and dated back to the 
eighteenth century. Pitt's Canada Bill of 1791 had divided the 
old French province into two separate provinces, 
Canada, each with its own governor-general, a legislative coun- 
cil, and a representative legislative assembly. The 
council was appointed by the crown and was responsible only 
to the Colonial Office. The result was to concentrate political 
power in each province in the hands of a few wealthy families; 
the administration became corrupt and ruinously extravagant. In 
the spring and summer of 1837 matters came to a deadlock 
between the provincial representative assemblies and the respective 
councils. The Canadians demanded that the appropriation of 
the funds raised by taxation be put wholly in the hands of their 
representatives; that the council be changed to an elective body ; 
and that with the exception of the governor, the members of the 



1000 THE FIRST ERA OF REFORM [victoria 

executive staff be resjoonsible to the provincial parliament. The 
British Colonial governments have since been reconstituted sub- 
stantially upon these lines, but in 1837 public opinion had not yet 
reached the point where the complete autonomy of the colonies 
could be regarded with favor. Lord Eussell, therefore, offered a 
series of resolutions which were intended to be conciliatory, in 
which he recognized the existence of abuses, but unfortunately 
asserted the impossibility of granting to the provinces a control, of 
the executive ministers of government. 

The Canadians were not satisfied, and when the provincial 
governors attempted to use repressive measures, in order to bring 
to terms such leaders as Papineau, the Speaker of the 
in Canada, Assembly of the Lower Province, the provinces broke 
out in insurrection. Although the rebellion was easily 
suppressed, the British government was seriously alarmed. The 
revolt had found many sympathizers along the American frontier 
and there was grave danger of complications with the United 
States. The American vessel Caroline had been used to take pro- 
visions from the American shore to a body of insurgents who were 
operating from Navy island in the Niagara Eiver. The British 
officials had seized the boat in American waters, set it on fire, and 
sent it over the falls. 

The ministry saw that a serious mistake had been made. The 
Russell resolutions were hastily withdrawn and Lord Durham, an 
able and energetic character, was dispatched to Canada 
The union of as a Special commissioner with unusual powers. Great 
1840. ' as were his powers Durham managed to exceed them, 

and the opposition forced the ministry to recall him. 
Durham had remained in the country long enough, however, to 
discover that there were other causes of trouble that lay back of 
the constitutional question. The population of Upper Canada 
consisted largely of English; Lower Canada consisted of F-rencli. 
The two provinces were jealous of each other, and the two races 
were upon anything but friendly terms. Pitt's unfortunate divi- 
sion into an English Canada and a French Canada had only 
emphasized the race differences, aud encouraged race jealousies. 
What the Canadas needed, fully as much as constitutional reform, 



1838] THE IRISH POOR LAW 1001 

was such a political union as in time would make of the two peo- 
ples one nation. Durham's report was accepted and was made the 
basis of the Canada Bill of 1840. By this bill the two Canadas 
were united under one governor-general, a legislative council, 
consisting of life members nominated by the crown, and a repre- 
sentative assembly. The responsibility of the ministry to the 
provincial parliament was not granted in the bill, but the principle 
has been since fully established by practice. The appropriation 
of public funds, also, with the exception of a fixed civil list, was 
entrusted to the popular branch of the provincial parliament. 

The affairs of Ireland, in the meanwhile, had proved fully as 

vexatious to the ministry, if not as urgent, as the affairs of Canada. 

A commission of inquiry had laid bare a condition of 

TheJrish 

Poor Law, misery which exceeded the expectations even of the 
Irish members, and in 1838 parliament to mend mat- 
ters sought to extend the English workhouse system to Ireland. 
It was taken for granted that an able bodied Irishman who wanted 
work could find it and that the^ ordinary living of the Irish poor 
was to be preferred to life in the workhouse. The suffering of 
the Irish, however, was due to the fact, not that the people were 
unwilling to work, but that they had outgrown the ability of their 
little island to feed them. The lavf, therefore, added little to the 
credit of the ministry. Instead of allaying the sufferings of the 
Irish, it only added to the distress of the destitute, and put a new 
premium on pauperism. 

From the Poor Law the ministry proceeded to take up the 
questions of tithes and corporations. In both cases it succeeded 
in putting new laws on the statute books, but only 
Biiv^^irish ^^^61' i^ ^^^ given Unmistakable signs of its declining 
Municipal strength by accepting from the conservative opposition 
amendments which made the laws virtually conserva- 
tive measures. 

The nineteenth century had brought with it a further develop- 
ment of the inventive genius which marked the close of the eight- 
eenth. The canal system of Brindley and the improved roads of 
Telford and Macadam had done much to encourage industry by 
providing better facilities of exchange. Yet the question was 



1002 THE FIRST ERA OF REFORM [victoria 

very early asked whether steam could not be used as the motive 
power in locomotion. The question was answered in part by 

Fulton in America in 1811, and by Bell in Scotland in 
Ums^^^^^' 181^5 ^iicl long before Victoria had begun her reign, 

English shipyards were turning out their first essays 
at steam craft. The application of steam to land travel, however, 
had met with an apparently insuperable obstacle in the absence of 
a roadbed of the requisite smoothness and solidity. Some wild 
attempts had been made on country roads, to the consternation of 
the rural population and the inevitable destruction of engineer 
and crew. But although a suggestion lay at hand in the horse 
tramways which were in common use in the mining regions, all 
efforts to get at a practical solution of the problem had proved 
fruitless, until George Stephenson, the son of a poor collier of 
Northumberland, and a self-educated man, as the result of many 
experiments finally constructed an engine which would run on a 
prepared track. In 1825 he opened the Stockton and Darlington 
railway for the conveyance of both passengers and freight. Five 
years later he opened the Manchester and Liverpool line when his 
engines outstripped all competitors, attaining a speed of thirty-six 
miles an hour. It was on this occasion that Huskisson, who was 
present with Wellington and Peel, met with the unfortunate acci- 
dent which resulted in his death. 

Thus far, the industrial development of England and the reforms 

of parliament apparently had benefited only the upper classes. 

The poor laborer found himself as in the eighteenth 

The Char- ... 

tists,i838, century still swinging between moderate prosperity and 
abject poverty. The Poor Law, which cut him off from 
state help, seemed particularly harsh. Food was dear, work scarce, 
wages low, and his home, especially if in the city, filthy and over- 
crowded. Sometimes a whole family, parents and children, occu- 
pied a single cellar which was generally wet and foul. It is said 
that in Manchester one-tenth of the population lived in these dens 
below the street. The working people, although generally ignor- 
ant, yet had their own ideas as to the reforms needed, and in 
1838, in a meeting near Birmingham, they drew up a national 
petition, or "People's Charter," which is remarkable both for its 



1837-1839] THE CHARTISTS 1003 

moderation and for its reasonableness. They demanded (1) 
annual parliaments, (2) universal suffrage, (3) vote by ballot, (4) 
abolition of the property qualification for members of parliament, 
and (5) payment for service in parliament. ,A demand for equal 
electoral districts had been originally included in the list but was 
later withdrawn. In June 1839 the charter supported, it was said, 
by a million signatures, was presented to the House of Commons, 
but only to be rejected. The people expressed their disappoint- 
ment in rioting and other lawless acts ; but they were easily put 
down and the great movement from which so much had been 
expected subsided. 

The era of the Chartist agitation was marked, also, by a revival 

of the old agitation against the Corn Laws. During ten years of 

prosperity, the Corn Laws had dropped out of sight, 

aaiiauln ^^^ ^^^^ series of unfavorable seasons which began in 

ogM Corn 1837 had once more called attention to the fact that the 

Laws. 

price of bread was raised by artificial means, and that 
much of the ensuing distress was needless and was due directly to 
the selfishness of landholders and their tenants. Associations were 
formed in London and other places in order to begin a systematic 
agitation against the unjust laws. Prominent in the movement 
was Eichard Cobden, a calico printer of Manchester, who had 
traveled much, observed keenly, and gathered a vast amount of 
valuable information concerning the social conditions which pre- 
vailed in Europe and America. Another man of the era, no less 
noteworthy, was the Quaker manufacturer of Eochdale, John 
Bright, whose marvelous oratory and deep sympathy for the people 
made him for years a conspicuous political force. During the 
Melbourne ministry the direct influence of these men was exerted 
altogether outside of parliament. Within parliament the cause was 
represented by Charles Villiers who persisted in offering each year a 
bill for the abolition of the restrictions upon the bread of the poor. 
Since 1830, with the exception of a few months, the conduct of 
foreign affairs had remained in the hands of Lord Palmerston. In 
the main his relations with France had been friendly, although he 
had stoutly opposed the project of annexing Belgium. He had 
also stood with Louis Philippe in favoring the claims of Isabella, 



1004 THE FIRST ERA OF REFORM [victoria 

the daughter of Ferdinand VII. of Spain, who as representing 
a constitutional party against the absolutist Don Carlos, her 
uncle, naturally carried the sympathies of the consti- 
Theforeign tutional king of France. In handling the eastern ques- 
Paimerston. tion, howevcr, a far more delicate problem. Palmers- 
ton found it not so easy to keep on good terms 
with his neiglibor. The barbarism of Turkey probably was no 
greater ; her ferocious cruelties no more flagrant than in earlier 
centuries, but the Christian states of Europe now knew more 
about them and their people were beginning to demand that the 
common nuisance be abated. It was, however, not such a simple 
matter as the Treaty of London and the battle of Navarino seemed 
to indicate, because while the western powers despised the Turk, 
they distrusted and feared Eussia. The aim of Palmerston's 
policy, therefore, was not to reduce Turkey but to free her from 
the shadow of Eussia, which had steadily deepened as a result of 
the war of Greek liberation. Moreover, in the subsequent revolt 
of Mehemet Ali, Viceroy of Egypt, Eussia, as the price of her 
support, had secured a pledge from Turkey to close the Dar- 
danelles to the warships of other nations whenever Eussia should 
be at war. Turkey, Palmerston believed, if kept under western 
influence might be led to give a respectable government to her 
own people and support England against the encroachments of 
Eussia in the east. Thiers, the wily minister of Louis Philippe, 
had at first supported England, but in order to secure French 
influence in Syria he had of late begun to encourage Mehemet Ali 
in his attempt to wrest that country from the Sultan. Palmers- 
ton took alarm at once, and declared that England could not allow 
France to control tlie road to India. In July 1840 he succeeded 
in forming an alliance with Eussia, Prussia, Austria, and Turkey, 
nominally to end the revolt of Mehemet Ali, but really to 
put a stop to French intrigues in Egypt and Syria. Thiers 
desired war, but Louis Philippe had no idea of imperiling his 
throne, in order to sujiport the schemes of his minister, and 
readily accepted the resignation of Thiers. Guizot, an advocate 
of peace and an ardent admirer of English institutions, took his 
place. An Anglo-Austrian squadron captured Acre and forced 



1840-1842] THE OPIUM WAR 1005 

Mehemet Ali to terms, compelling him to restore the Sultan's 
fleet which had deserted to the rebels, and to promise to content 
himself with Egypt, his hereditary possession. In the final settle- 
ment made by the powers, the ancient ruling of the Porte was 
restored; the Dardanelles was again closed to warships of all 
nations, unless the Sultan himself should be at war. 

In his conduct of affairs in the reiftoter east Palmerston was 
likewise successful, although the result can hardly be said to 
redound to the credit of England. In 1840 England be- 
Warwitir' S^^ 1^6r first war with China, which was fought virtually 
18^1842. ^^ force Indian opium upon the Chinese. The minis- 
try had nobly laid down the principle that "her maj- 
esty's government could not interfere for the purpose of enabling 
British subjects to violate the laws of the country with which 
they trade;" but unfortunately the government did not have the 
courage to stand by this sound principle, and allowed itself to 
be dragged into the war on the plea that it had already begun. 
The Chinese of course could make no effective resistance, and in 
1843 were compelled to cede the Island of Hong Kong, to open 
five ports to British trade, and pay a heavy bill of indemnity. 

Until 1839 the postal system had remained untouched by the 
reforming mania of the generation. Some improvements had been 
introduced since the beginning of George III. 's reign, 
^mand ^^^ ^^ system was still far behind the needs of the 
nf<mn ^S®* ^^^ P^°^ Were practically excluded from letter- 

writing, and the idea that the price must vary with the 
distance also precluded the use of the mails for business or politics. 
In 1837 Kowland Hill began investigating the postal system and 
soon was able to formulate the principles which lie at the basis of 
the modern system, that is, that the cost of carrying a letter does 
not vary with the distance, and that up to a certain point it costs 
the government no more to carry many letters than one. Hill, 
accordingly, proposed to charge one uniform rate; to reduce the 
price to one penny, and to secure prepayment by the use of a 
stamp. His plan was adopted by the government in 1839.^ The 

' The stamp was first printed on tlie envelope. In 1840 the familiar 
adhesive w^as devised. 



1006 THE riEST ERA OP REFORM [victokia 

increased facility in the nse of the mails came in just in time to 
aid powerfully in the Corn Law agitation. 

In the same year the government made an important advance 

in the encouragement of public education. Since 1833 parliament 

had regularly appropriated £20,000 for this purpose. 

PiMicedu- But in 1839 it raised the annual grant to £30,000, 

cation, 1839. ... 

and taking the administration of the fund from the 
treasury put it in the hands of a special committee of the Privy 
C'oimcil. Yet parliament was by no means awake to the needs 
of the three million English children, of whom fully one-half were 
growing up in a state of utter ignorance. The very year in which 
it raised its appropriations for the education of the children of 
England to the magnificent sum of £30,000, it voted £70,000 for 
building stables for the queen's horses. 

An event of prime importance to the happiness of the young 
queen that is associated with the last days of the Melbourne min- 
istry, was her marriage on February 10, 1840 to the 
riageofthe young prince of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Prince Albert, 
as he is commonly known, was a singularly felicitous 
combination of the scholar, the poet, and the man of affairs; the 
kind of man who could sit alone at the organ and play to himself 
by the hour, who delighted in the singing of birds, in the happy, 
placid, calm days of a quiet, unostentatious home life, who loved 
letters, knew history, grasped the great problems of political 
science, was interested in farming, in machinery, in the industrial 
arts, and in a word touched with a deep, true sympathy the many- 
sided life in which he moved. His was one of those calm, sweet 
natures, free from vice or foible, inspired by an all-pervading 
sense of duty, in whose presence weak men become strong and 
the wearied and careworn, confident. With rare good sense he 
accepted a position which a smaller man might have found 
humiliating, constituting himself a sort of "minister of art and 
education without portfolio," holding severely aloof from all party 
affiliations, and for the rest, conducting himself as a sort of private 
secretary and unofficial counsellor of the queen. "I study the 
politics of the day with great industry," he wrote. "I speak 
quite openly to the ministers on all subjects, and endeavor quietly 



1840-1861] PRI]SrCE ALBERT 1007 

to be of as much use to Victoria as I can. In foreign affairs I 
think I haye done some good." He grasped fully the spirit of 
the English constitution and comprehended as none of the Han- 
overian monarchs had, that henceforth the strength of the English 
monarchy lay in the character of the monarch, and that if the 
monarchy were to rise in the esteem of the nation, the monarch 
must be a good man. He grasped, also, as neither Wellington 
nor the easy-going Melbourne had, the significance of the new drift 
given to English politics by the reforms of the last decade, and 
exerted his influence to bring the monarchy into touch with the 
new era which had opened. It is needless to say that such a 
man was deeply loved and respected for his own sake by the young 
queen, who needed just such a sage and disinterested counsellor, 
one whom she could trust when her ministers failed her, and that 
when he died in 1861, his death was mourned by the people as a 
national calamity. 

The Melbourne ministry had long since exhausted the new 

stock of popularity that had come to it from the accession of 

the young queen, and had been for some time steadily 

uf^Tme'^ losing ground. Even the brightest spot in its late 

Melbourne historv, the able handling of the Turkish question by 

ministry. •''• _ ... . 

Palmerston, did not escape criticism. It was said that 
he had been unnecessarily meddlesome, and that he had lost the 
friendship of France for his pains. In May 1839 the ministry had 
brought forward a bill which proposed to suspend the constitu- 
tion of Jamaica for five years. The occasion of such a bill, so 
contrary to all the traditions of the Whig party, was the lamenta- 
ble condition in which Jamaica had fallen as a result of the 
obstinate determination of the planters to defeat the object of the 
recent abolition of slavery. The bill made such a poor showing 
upon the second reading that Melbourne at once sent in his resig- 
nation. Peel was called on to undertake the government, but 
refused, unless the queen should dismiss with the ministers the 
sisters and wives whom Melbourne had placed about the young 
sovereign as "Ladies of the Bedchamber." The queen naturally 
objected to have her family circle broken up. "They would treat 
me like a girl" she indignantly exclaimed; "I will show them that 



1008 THE FIRST ERA OP REFORM [victoeia 

I am Queen of England." So she turned again to Melbourne, 
who had been her tutor in the first trying years of her reign and 
upon whose fatherly sympathy and counsel she had learned to rely, 
and for two years longer her favor alone kept him and his fellow 
ministers in power. 

In 1841, however, even the support of the queen could not 
sustain longer the failing strength of the Melbonrne ministry. 

Melbourne, indolent and easy-going, had long since 
Melbourne ceased to lead even the members of his own party. 

The pendulum, moreover, which had been so long 
swinging towards reform, had already begun the backward sweep, 
and when Melbourne appealed to the country upon a proposition 
to substitute a moderate duty for the old Corn Law tax, the conserv- 
atives rallied the agrarian interests, and came back to Westminster 
with a majority of 81 members in the new parliament. Melbourne 
promptly resigned and Peel was again invited to undertake the 
government. 



. CHAPTER VIII 

PEEL AND THE DISSOLUTION OF THE OLD PARTIES. THE CRIMEAN 
WAR. PALMERSTON AND BRITISH FOREIGN POLICY 

VICTORIA, 1S41-1S65 

The remainiug years of Victoria's reign fall into two strongly 

marked periods. The first period closes with the death of Pal- 

merston in 1865, and is marked by the dissolution of 

T?16 C7)0Cll.^ of 

Victoria's the old Whig and Tory parties, and the reorganization 
of the political elements of the nation about the new 
issues which have since divided Liberals and Conservatives. The 
second period is marked by the struggle of the new parties to 
control and direct the policy of Great Britain, and by the results 
thus far attained. 

Peel began his administration in September 1841. Nominally 
the appointment was a Tory triumph. Peel, however, was a 
thorough-going business man, and inclined to approach 
^«sition of public questions from a practical rather than from a 
sentimental point of view. Pie had stood out against 
the Reform Bill of 1833 to the last; but, like Wellington, he had 
then accepted the results as final, and, abandoning the name of 
Tory which had become associated in the minds of many with the 
older reactionary elements which the nation had repudiated, under 
the new name of "Conservatives," he had rallied his 
shattered ranks, and taken his stand upon what was vir- 
tually conservative Whig ground. On many points, however, he 
was still far in advance of the great mass of his party which still 
represented the landlords rather than the millowners and man- 
ufacturers, and was haunted by the traditions of Castlereagh and 
Addington. 

1009 



1010 DISSOLUTION OF THE OLD PARTIES [victoria 

The first efforts of the new ministry were addressed to a 
reorganization of the national finances, which had been left in a 

lamentable condition by the outgoing Whigs. In many 
tariff and in- cases the existing tariff was virtually prohibitive and the 
theincome treasury had been steadily depleted by the diminisliing 

returns. Peel, therefore, selected 750 articles of com- 
mon consumption and by reducing the tariff hoped to encourage 
importation, and thus lay the foundation for a subsequent increase 
in the national revenues. He believed, also, that the great gain 
to the consumers, would more than atone for the direct loss to the 
protected interests. He saw, moreover, that the first effect upon 
the treasury would be to deplete still further the present income, 
and proposed to tide over the interval by an Income Tax, but under 
pledge that it should be dropped at the close of five years. The 
pledge, however, was never redeemed. Before the five years had 
expired. Peel was out of office, and, in the steady advance of Eng- 
land towards free trade since, his successors have never been able 
to dispense with the increasingly important revenue derived from 
this source. 

The Peel administration fell heir also to the annoyance caused 
by the troublesome agitations which had been gathering new 

strength during the later days of the Melbourne minis- 

The Chartists lyy i^i^g Cliartists Were still holding monster meetings 
again, 1842. ■' . 

and sending up their monster petitions to parliament. 

The tones of these petitions, moreover, were growing more per- 
sistent. But Peel was not a minister to be coerced into action, 
and after a petition with a million signatures had been ignomin- 
iously turned out of parliament without so much as a hearing, the 
Chartists subsided again for a season. 

A far more serious agitation appeared in Ireland, where 

O'Connell had been for some time stirring up the country upon a 

proposition to repeal the Act of Union and reestablish 

Peel and the ,, ^ . ■, ,. , ^r- i i i it ± 

Irish (III, s- the Irish parliament. His plan was, by holding monster 

tiiiii. Daniel . i • j • i j_i 

o'('nmicHi7i meetings at different historic places, to keep the matter 

before the English government until it should be 

forced to yield to moral pressure and comply with the demands 

of a long-suffering people. He disclaimed all thought of vio- 



1842-1847] DANIEL O'CONNELL 1011 

lence, or of seeking his ends by imlawfnl measures. He held 
an unquestioned sway over the great mass of the Irish people and 
controlled the vote of the Irish representatives in parliament. 
Neither Whigs nor Tories, however, were ready to grant Home 
Eule to Ireland for the sake of securing the Irish vote, so that 
thus far the enthusiasm of the great leader had accomplished little 
more than to keep his cause before the public. But in 1842 a 
body of younger enthusiasts, to whom the ponderous methods of 
O'Connell seemed slow as well as aimless, broke away in a separate 
party which they called the "Young Ireland Party." They 
adopted the maxims and watchword of the United Irishmen of 
'98, and proposed to secure by arms what they could not gain by 
peaceful measures. The chiefs were Charles Gavan Buffy, Smith 
O'Brien, Thomas Davis, John Dillon, and Thomas Meagher. The 
party was small, their cause hopeless, and by their rashness they 
soon brought the larger but more innocent movement of O'Con- 
nell into discredit with the government. O'Connell had secured 
a great meeting at Clontarf, but the government thought it time 
to interfere and forbade the meeting. O'Connell, true to his prin- 
ciple of securing his ends by moral suasion ouly, yielded, and 
issued a proclamation recalling the summons. He was arrested, 
however, tried and coJivicted on a charge of conspiracy. An 
appeal was made to the House of Lords, and the Lords had the 
wisdom to reverse the decision of the lower court. But the hold 
of O'Connell on the Irish people was broken. The Young Ireland 
Party left him in disgust. The people refused longer to support 
useless meetings that evaporated in fine speeches, and turned to 
the hotheads, who only w^aited an opportunity to attempt to win 
by violence what O'Connell had failed to secure by milder meas- 
ures. O'Connell finally retired to Italy where he died in 1847. 

The agitation, however, had not been altogether fruitless. 

Peel saw that something must be radically wrong where there was 

so much disquiet, and appointed a commission to 

PccVs 7716(18- 

ures for inquire into the working of the Irish land system. He 
Ireland. o ./ 

also made a public grant to the Catholic College of 
Maynooth to assist in the better education of the priesthood, and 
established three secular colleges at Belfast, Cork, and Galway, 



1012 DISSOLUTION OF THE OLD PARTIES [victokia 

known as Queen's Colleges where Catholic and Protestant youth 
might he trained side by side. These measures were not suffered 
to pass unchallenged. At the idea of using public money to help 
educate Catholic priests, "the Orangeman raised his war-whoop," 
while neither Catholics nor Protestants were satisfied with the 
Queen's Colleges, which they were pleased to denounce as "God- 
less and atheistical." Of even more importance were the results 
of the commission in revealing to the public by an authoritative 
report the deep reproach of the Irish land system. Nothing could 
be done yet, however; Peel's party were against him. The dead 
inertia of old Tory bigotry could not be overcome in a day. 

In the early days of Peel's ministry, also, the Webster- 
Ashburton Treaty brought to a peaceful issue the long dispute 

with the United States over the boundary of Canada 
States' ^^^ Maine. The Maine boundary, however, was hardly 

^ue^mns settled before the good understanding between the two 

countries was again threatened by a similar dispute 
over the Oregon boundary in the northwest. But after a good 
deal of bluster and noisy talk on the part of American politicians, 
whose common sense had been wafted away on the rhythmic Jingle 
of their "fifty-four forty or fight," the people came back to earth 
and accepted the present boundary, giving the English Vancouver 
Island and allowing them to share in the navigation of the 
Columbia Kiver. 

Peel was compelled Quring his early years to give a good deal 
of his attention to colonial matters. The outward expansion of 

England had never ceased during all the early decades 
vrogress ^^ ^^-^^ century. The Napoleonic wars had greatly 

broadened and extended the sphere of colonial enter- 
prise. South Australia had been colonized in 1836 and its capital 
named Adelaide in honor of the Queen of William IV. In 1837 
the Dutch, who had not taken kindly to English rule in the old 
Cape settlement, had turned their backs upon the colony and passed 
over the northern boundary into Natal. Here they had remained 
independent until 1843, when the English once more took posses- 
sion. In 1839 the English had established themselves at Aden at 
the mouth of the Red Sea. In 1840 they began a permanent settle- 



1840-1849] COLON^IAL PROGRESS 1013 

ment in New Zealand. In India, also, the English had been 
steadily pushing forward. The general disorganization and mutual 
jealousies of the native States had created some such political con- 
ditions as the Romans found in Gaul in Caesar's time, and English 
officials found little difficulty, by appealing to the selfish interests 
of individual princes, in persuading them to submit to a protec- 
torate, or alliance, as the Romans would have called it, which 
swallowed them up as soou as their continued independence became 
an inconvenience to the English Indian government. Yet the loss 
of independence was not without some solid advantages. Under 
Lord William Bentinck the suttee was abolished and the thugs 
broken up. Bentinck, also, gave his support to Christian missions, 
which the company had discouraged from policy. He introduced 
the steamboat on the Ganges and proposed a scheme of carrying 
mails to Europe by way of the Red Sea. 

In the thirties a new menace to English influence in India 
appeared in the extension of Russian influence in the Afghan 

country and led directly to the unfortunate attempt of 
Af^haiiistan ^^^rd Auckland, Bentinck's successor, to set up in 

Afghanistan a vassal prince, who should be committed 
to English interests. Eor two years, 1839-1841, this vassal prince, 
Shah Shuja, was kept upon his precarious throne by the presence 
of English garrisons in the cities of Kandahar and Kabul, only 
to be murdered at last by his subjects, while his allies were driven 
out of the country. The retiring British army with some 12,000 
camp followers was cut off in the mountain passes. Only one 
European, a Dr. Bryden, succeeded in making his way to Jelalabad 
with the awful story. The English returned of course to carry 
on a war of vengeance, but only to retire again and leave Afghan- 
istan to the rightful ruler, Dost Mohammed, whose supposed Rus- 
sian sympathies had made all the trouble. The Afghan War was 
hardly over before a destructive war with the Sikhs of the Punjab 
began. After some of the hardest fighting which the English have 
ever met in India, in 1849, under the rigorous administration of 
Dalhousie, the power of the Sikhs was finally broken; the impor- 
tant Punjab was annexed, and Lahore and the whole region of the 
"Five Rivers" passed under British rule. 



1014 DISSOLUTION OF THE OLD PARTIES [victoria 

In 1843 the dissatisfaction of a powerful party in the Scottish 

Church with the system of lay patronage led to open revolt. Five 

hundred clerffymen, headed by Thomas Chalmers, left 

The Free . 

Church of the State Church and organized the Free Presbyterian 
Church of Scotland. Within eight years the attend- 
ants of the Free Church outnumbered those who attended the old 
Established Church. Almost simultaneously another protest 
against the lifelessness of a State Church was making itself felt 
in England. The English movement advanced in a very different 
direction from that of the Free Church in Scotland. Like the 
The Tract Wesleyan movement, it began in Oxford where a few 
rianmove- earnest men, among whose names those of Keble, New- 

nient m . 

England. man, and Pusey, are prominent, sought to stimulate 
the spiritual life of the country and check the growing liberalism 
of English religious thought, by leading the church back to the 
forms and ideals of a primitive Christianity. They sought to 
bring the church public under the influence of their views by the 
publication of a series of Ti-acts for the Times. Pusey remained 
in the English Church, but Newman and many others finally left 
the English Church altogether and entered the Catholic com- 
munion. 

Peel's attempts to reduce tariffs thus far had not affected the 
Corn Laws. From 1841 to 1846 the agitation had been kept before 

the public by Cobden and Bright, and their meetings, 
Lawagita- especially those held in Covent Garden Theatre in 1843, 

had attracted considerable attention. Yet crops had 
been good, the price of grain moderate, and public interest had 
flagged. But in 1845 the attention of the public was again directed 
to the matter by a complete failure of the crops and a correspond- 
ing rise in the price of bread. In Ireland where the heavy rains 
had completely destroyed the potato crop, the case was even more 
serious than in England. With millions of people starving for 
cheap bread. Peel felt that it was no time to talk of "interests," 
and proposed that the council declare the ports open for the free 
importation of bread stuffs. He was overruled, however, by the 
opposition of Stanley and Wellington, and abandoned his humane 
proposition. Then the Whig leaders, who had been as much 



1845] REPEAL OF CORN LAWS 1015 

opposed to the repeal of the Corn Laws as the Tories, took the 
matter up. It was not a time, however, to allow party considera- 
tions to dictate a policy, and in spite of the stolid indifference of the 
great mass of the Tories, Peel himself determin,ed to champion the 
cause of free bread. Many of his colleagues, including Wellington, 
agreed to stand by him. But the representatives of the great 
wheat-growing shires, who thought they beheld in the repeal of 
the Corn Laws the ruin of their constituents, and of the old Tory 
families, whose wealth lay still in agricultural lands, stoutly 
opposed him. They were led by Benjamin Disraeli, a man whom 
the House had not yet taken seriously. He was of Jewish descent ; 
he had been known to the public as a writer of some "curious, 
high-flown novels," and to his friends for his gorgeous taste in the 
matter of dress. About this man with the strange oriental mind 
the Tory protectionists rallied. They taunted Peel as a traitor to 
his party, as a recreant to the real interests of the country. They 
predicted the direst calamities; rents would be lowered; land 
would be worthless, and every farmer who held land by a lease 
would be bankrupt; vast areas would be thrown out of cultivation 
and thousands of agricultural laborers would be added to the mul- 
titudes who were already crying for bread. Yet in spite of the 
stubborn fight of Disraeli and his supporters. Peel, by the help of 

his personal following, the free traders, and the great 
the Corn body of the Whigs, carried his measure. The existing 

duties were to be reduced rapidly during a period of 
three years and then to remain fixed at one shilling per quarter, 
which was to be retained as a registration duty. In the case of 
Ireland even the registration duty was at first suspended and 
finally abolished. As usual, none of the dire calamities that the 
opponents of the bill had predicted ever appeared. The price 
of grain fell rapidly to the normal level, but the growth in the 
town populations, the continued prosperity of the manufactur- 
ing industries, and the ever-increasing multitude of those who 
depended upon the farmer for subsistence, kept up the demand 
for all kinds of farm products. It was not until 1870 when the 
extension of the American railway system and the increased facili- 
ties for navigation on the Great Lakes brought the western grain 



1016 DISSOLUTIOIS' OF THE OLD PAKTIES [victoria 

fields of America into close touch with the British home markets, 
that English farmers began to feel any serious competition with 
the foreign farmer. 

Peel had carried his point and abolished the Corn Laws; but 

his humanity had disrupted his party. Too many bitter things 

had been said on both sides to be easily forgotten or 

D'iST"U/tjtjiOTh of 

the Tory lightly forgiveu ; and when, later. Peel brought in the 
"Arms Act," which was designed to repress the law- 
lessness that had arisen in Ireland as the result of so much suffer- 
ing, Disraeli and his followers, knowing that the measure would be 
opposed by the Irish members and by many of the Whigs upon 
principle, took the opportunity for revenge, and by going over to 
the opposition, defeated Peel so hopelessly that he at once resigned. 
The breach was so serious and the real sympathies of the Peelites, 
as with the Canningites in 1828, were so much with the more 
liberal and progressive Whigs, that in time most of Peel's follow- 
ers were merged in the ranks of their old enemies. Among these 
were George Hamilton Gordon, Earl of Aberdeen, and William 
Ewart Gladstone. The disruption of the Tory party was final ; 
broken and div^ided it went out of office, virtually to stay out until 
1874, when it returned again in the new "Conservatives" under the 
lead of Disraeli. 

Lord John Russell, whose name had been so long associated 

with the cause of reform and who had been among the first of the 

Wliig leaders to announce his conversion to the repeal 

The Russell 

ministry, of the Corn Laws, was the natural standard bearer of 
the new liberal party formed of progressive Whigs and 
Peelite Tories. Lord Palmerston became Foreign Secretary; 
Earl Grey, son of the old Whig reformer, became Colonial and 
War Secretary, and Macaulay, the historian, became Paymaster 
of the Forces. The ministry, however, v/as not strong; Russell 
was not really an able man, and Palmerston, the strong man of 
the ministry, who had been originally a Canningite Tory, had not 
the fall confidence of the Liberals. 

Ireland, as usual, demanded all the spare attention of the 
government; a repetition of the disaster of 1845 had again 
brought one-half the population of the island to the verge of star- 



18451848] THE FAMINE IN" IRELAND 1017 

vation. The government wrestled bravely with the problem; the 

Arms Act, which the Whigs when in opposition had defeated, was 

taken up and carried with the help of Peel, whose mag- 

Thefamine nanimitv shines out in this connection in marked con- 
m Ireland. J 

trast with the vindictiveness of the man who had 
dethroned him. An "Encumbered Estates Court" was set up with 
the hope partly of enabling bankrupt landlords to sell a portion of 
their lands and pay off some of their liabilities, and partly of intro- 
ducing a new class of landlords who would bring in fresh enterprise 
and capital. To relieve the immediate distress relief works were 
established, and finally the government undertook the actual feed- 
ing of the population, opening soup-kitchens and free food depots 
in all parts of the famine-smitten country. 

In the meanwhile, the Irish landlords had got hold of a danger- 
ous half-truth: that the cutting up of their estates into small 

farms had been the cause of most of the trouble. As 
o/miand"^ soon as the famine was over, therefore, in their own way 

they set about mending matters, uniting the small 
farms into large farms, raising rents, and evicting unnecessary 
tenants. The landlords, Jn many cases absentees, who knew 
little of their tenants and cared only for the rent rolls, urged on 
their agents in the work of forcible eviction, and reaped in return 
for their ruthless haste and cruelty a harvest of fire and pillage, 
of wanton destruction of life and property. In a few years the 
work of reorganizing Ireland had reduced its population from 
8,000,000 to 5,000,000. 

The year 1848 was a year of revolution over all Europe. Louis 
Philippe, the constitutional king of France, was driven from his 

throne to die in exile. In November Louis Napoleon, 

TJic licci'V of 

revolution, a hungry fortune seeker, became President of the 
second French republic. In France the revolution 
had been inspired largely by the upgrowth of new socialistic ideas, 
but in the other parts of Europe it drew its inspiration from the 
long-repressed spirit of nationalism. In Hungary, under the 
fiery Kossuth, the people rose to assert their independence of 
Austria and to establish a free constitution, and were suppressed 
only by the intervention of Russia. In Italy the people of Lorn- 



1018 DISSOLUTIOISr OF THE OLD PARTIES [victoeia 

bardy and Venetia rose against Austrian rule, and supported by 
Charles Albert, King of Sardinia, seemed on the point of establish- 
ing a free national government when the Sardinians were beaten 
by the Austrian Eadet^^ky at Novara, and Charles Albert was 
forced to abdicate; Mazzini and other patriot leaders succeeded 
in establishing a republic at Eome only to be overthrown by 
the interference of the new Napoleon. In Germany the desire for 
free institutions went hand in hand with a desire for national 
unity, and although the time for national union had not yet come, 
many of the states succeeded in securing constitutions. 

It would be strange if England and particularly Ireland, where 
the experience of the past two years had been so severe, should 

not show some sympathy with the revolutionary activity 
uovarv"mirit ^^^ic^^ ^^^^ abroad once more in Europe. In England, 
aiid^irliand ^owcvcr, the movement evaporated in a farcical attempt 

of the Chartists to invade parliament with another one 
of their monster petitions. In Ireland the deliberate attempts of 
the Young Ireland Party to goad the people into revolt, for a 
time caused some anxiety; but the people had been so crushed by 
their sufferings, that they had no heart for a strife of arms, and 
the attempt ended with the transportation of the leaders, Mitchell, 
Meagher, and O'Brien. 

A more congenial field for the activity of the Liberal ministry 
presented itself in the colonies, where it was not compelled to 

prejudice its cause by repressive measures. In 1849 
TheRu.'isea Russell introduced into the Australian colonies, a sys- 
thecoionics. tem of local self -government, similar to that which the 

Melbourne ministry had introduced in Canada in 1840. 
The home government reserved to itself simply a control over foreign 
affairs with the responsibility of providing for the common defense; 
the colonies undertook to administer local affairs, levy and collect 
customs, and raise and equip the local militia. In a general way 
the form of the local government was a close imitation of that of 
the mother country. The governors, who were appointed by the 
queen, represented the constitutional sovereign, and like her they 
acted through a body of ministers responsible to a bicameral 
legislative body. The same year, also, saw the successful repeal 



1842-1847] FACTOET LEGISLATIOIsr 1019 

of the last of the old Navigation Acts. The commerce of Eng- 
land with her colonies or of one colony with another, must still 
be carried on in British bottoms. The Canadians objected to the 
monopoly of British shipowners and claimed a right to get trans- 
portation at the lowest rate offered in the general market, in this 
case the American, which offered to underbid the English ship- 
owners. Lord Grey, the Colonial Secretary, supported the claim 
as a fair application of the free trade principle, which England 
had adopted in the repeal of the Corn Laws ; he saw in the meas- 
ure, moreover, "the best security for the attachment of the North 
American colonies to the British crown." 

The Russell ministry further proved its devotion to the cause 

of the people by completing a series of humane laws designed to 

protect the victims of industry. In 1842 Lord Ashley 

FdctoriJ IcQ- *j J 

isiatinn, supplemented his Factory Bill of 1833, with a second bill 
designed to regulate the labor of children and women in 
mines and collieries. A parliamentary investigation had revealed 
a startling state of affairs. The mines were wet; the heat 
intense; the men dispensed with clothing altogether ; the. women 
wore only coarse trousers made of gunny sacking. Children, also, 
were set to work in the mines at six, five, and four years of age. 
The women and children were hitched to the coal carts by a chain 
attached to a heavy band about the waist. Here in endless dark- 
ness, far beyond the reach of the rays of the sun, they toiled 
through weary hours, frequently on alternate days for twenty-four 
hours at a stretch, tugging at the heavy carts, and often com- 
pelled by the low passages to crawl upon hands and knees. The 
slave plantations in the West Indies in their palmiest days were 
charged with nothing more degrading or brutalizing. The Lords 
modified the bill somewhat; but the main features were secured, 
making it no longer lawful to employ women and children under 
ground, or to keep children betAveen ten and thirteen at work for 
more than three days a week. In 1844 the working time of chil- 
dren was reduced to six and a half hours a day, in order to give 
time for attending school. In 1847 the work of those under 
eighteen was reduced from twelve to ten hours a day and to eight 
on Saturdays. In these wise and humane laws the protectionist 



1020 DISSOLUTION OF THE OLD PARTIES [Victoria 

often seemed more devoted to the cause of humanity than men 
like Bright and Cobden, who blinded by their devotion to the 
cold-blooded principles of the Manchester School, were inclined 
to regard any remedial action on the part of the government as an 
interference with the divine law of competition. 

It was the glory of Eussell's free trade ministry to devise and 
carry out the first great World's Fair. A huge building of glass 
and iron, designed by Joseph Paxton and known as the 
Paicicl^is5i ^J^'ystal Palace, was raised in Hyde Park, and here the 
nations of Europe were invited to put on exhibition in 
friendly rivalry the best results of tlieir attainments in arts and 
manufactures. Prince Albert acted as President of the exposition 
and found in the furthering of such a scheme, full scope for the 
exercise of that broad and liberal symjDathy which was so charac- 
teristic of the man. The exposition was a success as it deserved 
to be; the more backward nations of Europe were brought face to 
face with the civilization of their more advanced neighbors and 
received a new stimulus in all the arts of life. 

Its great world's fair was destined to be the last triumph of 
the Russell ministry. The end, however, came not because Eng- 
lishmen were weary of the liberal Whigs, as the sequel 
^ulldi'min- P^'o^^id, but because the liberal leaders could not live 
aril'mf"^' together without quarreling. Palmerston had been 
left to conduct foreign affairs, generally, in Ms own way; 
but he had been headstrong, impetuous, inclined to bluster in 
dealing with weaker nations, and .overquick to dispatch the war- 
ships of England to assert the dignity of the flag. In 1850 
an Athenian mob had sacked the house of Don Pacifico, a Jew of 
Gibraltar, who claimed to be a British subject. Palmerston, 
instead of resorting to the quieter methods of diplomacy to secure 
redress, promptly blockaded the Piraeus. At home many were 
displeased, particularly the queen. The next year, however, the 
conduct of the minister passed the bounds of further endurance, 
when without consulting his colleagues he gave his approval to 
the work of the corrupt ring of politicians who had overturned the 
second French republic and made Louis Napoleon emperor. The 
queen was deeply offended and Russell in order to disclaim 



1850, 1852] THE FIEST DEKBY MIJSriSTRY 1021 

responsibility for the act was compelled to get rid of his officious 
colleague. Kussell himself, however, was not so secure in his 
position that he could defy the minister who regarded his chief as 
the principal cause of his overthrow. In 1850 he had failed to 
arrest a measure, presented by Locke King, which proposed to 
assimilate the county and borough franchises, and had promptly 
resigned; but the recent death of Peel and the declining strength 
of Wellington had left the opposition without a leader of sufficient 
influence to undertake a ministry, and Eussell was persuaded to 
remain in office. The conversion of Palmerston, therefore, from 
a supporter to a bitter foe was a doubly serious matter, and when 
in February, 1852, Russell brought in a bill to strengthen the 
militia, Palmerston seized the opportunity to carry an amendment 
against the government, and forced Russell to resign. "I have 
had my tit-for-tat with John Russell," he boasted; "I turned 
him out on Friday last." 

The Peelites, deprived of their leader, were not strong enough 
to undertake a ministry, and the queen turned to Edward Stan- 
ley, since 1851 Lord Derby, who organized a govern- 
Thefirst ment with Disraeli as Chancellor of the Exchequer and 
try, i85z"'^'^" leader of the Commons. Although the Conservatives 
had gained recently, they were not yet strong enough 
to face the Liberals and Peelites combined. Disraeli's chief 
political capital had been the sufferings and wrongs which the 
free traders had brought upon the farmers by repealing the Corn 
Laws; and although j^arliament by a test vote of four hundred and 
sixty-eight to fifty- three had bound itself to support Peel's free 
trade position as the policy of the nation, when Disraeli brought 
forward his budget, while cunningly pretending to accept free 
trade as a finality, by a skillfully rearranged scheme of taxation 
he proposed to give an undue advantage to the farming commu- 
nities over the towns. At once the Liberals took alarm and a bitter 
fight began, in which the new Chancellor was finally beaten; 
Derby at once resigned. 

It was full time for the organization of a strong ministry, and 
the queen turned to George Gordon, Earl of Aberdeen, who had 
been Peel's foreign secretary, and had commanded the respect not 



1022 DISSOLUTION OF THE OLD PARTIES [victoria 

only of his old companions but of the Whigs as well. The result 

was a coalition ministry, in which Gladstone became Chancellor of 

the Exchequer, Lord John Eussell Foreign Secretary, 

Thecoaiition g^^^ Palmerston Home Secretary. The new ministry 

ministry of j j 

Aberdeen^, ^^8 particularly happy in the man who had undertaken 
^■^52 'r««^""' ^^® organization of the finances of the government. 

Ho had a remarkable power of imparting something 
of his own virility to the most indifferent of subjects. Under 
his wizard-like touch, columns of figures glowed with interest; 
the darkest corners of his ofiice were compelled to disclose their 
mysteries, and the dullest of his colleagues, to grasp the financial 
problems which confronted the state. Yet there was nothing 
novel or startling in the policy which he proposed; it was simply 
the traditional policy already adopted by Peel, — to continue 
the reduction of duties and retain the income tax until the increase 
of trade should restore the income of the treasury. In its treat- 
ment of foreign affairs, the new ministry was not so happy and 
soon managed to embroil the nation in a costly and profitless war, 
which added much to the glory of English arms but little to the 
credit of English diplomacy. 

Czar Nicholas had never given up his early scheme of securing 
"the key to the Russian house," and now that his friend Lord 

Aberdeen had become Prime Minister, he seemed to 
Games of the think that the time had come for a movement against 
ivar. the Ottoman Empire. "The sick man" he said, "is in 

extremities; the time has come for a clear understand- 
ing between England and Russia." The Czar, however, had not 
calculated upon the influence of the new French emperor, who 
had an ambition of his own to fulfill in making the Bonaparte 
throne again a power in Europe, and had seized upon a quarrel 
between the Greek and Latin monks over the guardianship of the 
Holy Places in Palestine as a pretext for intervention in Turkey. 
For two years the diplomatists quarreled over the matter; the 
emperor of the French and the Czar each claimed to be the 
natural protector of the Christian subjects of the Porte and each 
refused to allow the other to interfere. 

The English ministry was divided, and while the ministers 



1853-1855] THE CRIMEA]Sr WAR 1023 

quarreled, Russia determined to act and, by taking forcible posses- 
sion of the Turkish states on the Danube, secure a guarantee 

for the better government of the fourteen million Chris- 
Beginning of 

the War, tian subjects of the Sultan. Such high-handed action 
of course meant war; but Nicholas believed that 
the Turk could make little resistance, England would not inter- 
fere, and the French emperor would not dare to expose his brand 
new throne to the hazards of a foreign war. He did not 
appreciate, however, the deep-seated fear of Eussia which was 
the one tenet common to all the political creeds of the west. 
The advance to the Danube at once roused Austria and Prussia, 
who were not pleased at the extension of the Russian boundary 
in their direction. Nicholas had the Avisdom to withdraw 
before he came to open rupture with his near neighbors, but 
elsewhere Russians and Turks were already fighting. A Turkish 
fleet had been destroyed at Sinope, and Nicholas had secured the 
Black Sea. A Russian army had entered Bulgaria and the Czar's 
soldiers were swarming about the border fortresses of the Sultan. 
As the Czar had foreseen, the French emperor was afraid to 
act alone; but the Aberdeen ministry could not hold back while 
the Ottoman empire was overwhelmed before their eyes, and in 
spite of himself Aberdeen was forced into a war for which neither 
he nor the English were prepared. 

On March 27, 1854, England and France declared war, and late 

in the summer their armaments entered the Black Sea, to unite 

with the Turks and begin a combined attack upon 

The Crimean i t-> • , 

War, 1854, Sebastopol, Russia s great southern fortress in the 
Crimean peninsula. The allies landed in September 
1854, and after defeating the governor of the Crimea in the battle 
of the Alma, began the siege. From the first the conduct of the 
siege was marked by divided councils, continued blundering, and 
stupid inefficiency on the part of the allied commanders, but by 
the most heroic endurance and brilliant daring on the part of the 
troops, the French and the Turks being not one whit behind the 
English in displaying all the finest qualities of the soldier. The 
winter of 1854 found the allies without tents, without hospital 
supplies, without even suitable food. They had been seriously 



1034 DISSOLUTION OF THE OLD PARTIES [victoria 

crippled, also, by the hard but aimless fighting of the autumn which 
had given the names of Balaclava and Inkerman to English war 
history. Something was done by the heroic Florence Nightingale 
in restoring order in the plague smitten hospitals; still the sick 
and the wounded perished by thousands. In England, the suffer- 
ings of the soldiers, which as usual were charged to the 
nmd6%rim.e ii^efficiency of the ministry, roused an outburst of indig- 
^inme.rFeb. nation; Aberdeen was forced to resign, and Palmerston, 
the Home Secretary, whose pugnacious promptness in 
the Don Pacifico episode was remembered with more favor now 
that England was in trouble, was advanced to the first place in 
the government. 

Palmerston, who had been virtually shelved as Home Secretary, 
now found full scope for his magnificent energy, and soon infused 
order and efficiency in all the branches of service con- 
ofthe war, nected with the war. The allies plucked up new heart; 
Eussia was finding it increasingly diflicult to maintain 
a war in a region so remote from the seat of government and yet 
so accessible to her foes, and was showing unmistakable signs of 
exhaustion ; the death of Nicholas in March and the accession of 
Alexander 11. still further encouraged the hope of a speedy issue of 
the struggle. Neither side, however, was willing to make the 
necessary concessions, and with the opening of the season the 
fighting before Sebastopol was renewed. The affairs of the allies 
were now in very different stead from what they had been in the 
autuma. The efficiency of the British army had been greatly 
increased. The French poured in reinforcements, and Sardinia, 
who had joined the alliance in January, also sent her contingent, 
a small but efficient army of 15,000 men. The 
Sardinia strength of the allies left them free to push forward 
Jan. 26, 1S55.' their siege works without fear of attack. In June 
they began the series of direct assaults which after 
varying success, resulted at last on Sept. 8 in the storming of the 
Malakoff and the Little Redan by the French under Marshal 
McMahon; the English succeeded in entering the Great Redan 
but failed to hold it. The capture of the Malakoff forced 
the Russians to retire In the night following, Gortchakoff the 



1856] THE PEACE OP PAEIS 1025 

commander, blew up the works which still remained in his hands, 
sunk his ships, and retired to the north side of the harbor, destroy- 
ing his bridge of boats behind him. 

The fall of Sebastopol virtually ended the war. There were 
some minor engagements at sea, and on November 27 the great 

Turkish fortress of Kars on the Armenian frontier, 
Pari^^^*^*^'^ after a heroic resistance of six months, surrendered to 
wfr^^^^' Mnravieff. All parties, however, were eager to end a 

war which right thinking men generally regarded as the 
result of blundering diplomacy and, hence, unnecessary. When, 
therefore, on the 25tli of February, the representatives of the pow- 
ers met in congress at Paris, no serious obstacle lay in the way of a 
settlement, notwithstanding the many interests at stake, and in a 
month's time their work was done. Sebastopol was restored to 
Russia but not to be again fortified. The Danube was declared free, 
and the Black Sea thrown open to the merchantmen of all nations, 
but no warship of Russia or Turkey or any other power might enter 
its waters. TheDanubian principalities, Moldavia, Wallachia, and 
Servia, were placed under the protection of the powers. The 
powers, further, exacted a promise from the Saltan to allow his 
Christian subjects to enjoy privileges similar to those of his 
Mohammedan subjects. The congress also took advantage of the 
occasion to agree to abandon privateering and to acknowledge the 
right of a neutral flag to protect all goods except munitions of war. 
Thus the Crimean War ended in the complete success of the 
allies, in so far as treaties and protocols could concede the points 

at issue. But unfortunately Russia has since shown 

Results of jio intention of abandoning her earlier policy, and the 
the war. ^ i j ' 

Turk has proved himself as incorrigible a sinner as 
ever against the laws of civilization. No sooner had the western 
powers become involved in the struggle of 1870, than Russia 
coolly renounced the neutralization of the Black Sea, proceeded 
to rebuild and fortify Sebastopol, and to-day patrols its Baltic shores 
with one of the most powerful fleets of Europe; nor has she hesi- 
tated to interfere again in the internal affairs of Turkey or openly 
wage war against Turkey in the interests of the Christian subjects 
of the Turk. 



1026 DISSOLUTION or THE OLD PARTIES [victoria 

Palmerston was now supreme. He had not been a great Home 

Minister; he had never quite outgrown his early Tory training and 

was always more or less suspicious of projects of 

Theafter- domestic reform. He had, however, very definite ideas 

math of the ' ' "^ 

Crimean about English influence abroad; and England, dazzled 

by the success of the Crimean War, the hollowness of 
which was not then apparent, was not disinclined to a "brilliant 
foreign policy." Until his death, therefore, in 1865, with the 
exception of a temporary reaction in 1858, Palmerston was left to 
conduct the government as he pleased. Nor was it long before 
the soldiers and sailors of Britain found that there was more work 
cut out for them. The Crimean struggle was in fact followed by 
an aftermath of petty wars, in all of which England was more or 

less interested. First the Shah of Persia, directly 
War, 1856, inspired by Russian influence, had taken advantage of 

the distraction of England to invade Afghanistan and 
take Herat. The Shah well understood that this advance toward 
India meant war, and as soon as the Treaty of Paris freed the 
hands of Palmerston, the Shah was forced to abandon Herat and 
was glad to accept such terms as Palmerston saw fit to enforce. 

The Persian war had hardly closed before the Palmerston gov- 
ernment became involved in a quarrel with China over the arrest 

of some Chinese pirates, who had taken the precaution 
The second ^,0 shelter themselves under the British flag. The ius- 

Chinese War. o j 

tice of Palmerston's position was by no means apparent, 
even to his own followers. The Conservatives under Disraeli's 
lead opposed the war as a matter of course; but, Gladstone and 
Russell, Cobden and Bright, with a considerable following of 
Peelites and Liberals, also supported the opposition in its protest 
against the course of the pugnacious chief of the Liberals and 
managed to pass a vote of disapproval. Palmerston, however, 
appealed to the country, and the people showed their continued 
confidence in the minister by returning a decided majority. 

Before the new war was well under way Palmerston found him- 
self with a far more serious matter on his hands. The Sepoys, the 
native professional soldiers of India, had for some time been grow- 
ing restless under English rule. The Indian caste system did not 



1848-1856] THE IKDIAIST MUTI^TT 1027 

lend itself readily to the exigencies of military etiquette. Men who 

believed that their bliss or misery during unnumbered ages to 

come depended on the preservation of the exclusiveness 

The [ikHcL'TI 

Mutiny, prescribed by the religious traditions of a thousand 

Causes. - . 1 . . 

years, were m no mood to submit quietly to the petty 

requirements of barrack life, often imposed with unnecessary 

offeiisiveness by some reckless "Mulvaney" or hot-headed 

"Ortheris," to whom the "regulations," when administered upon 

the members of the subject race, were as unalterable as the laws of 

the Medes and Persians, good for the soul and "an honor to the 

service. " The Bengal army in particular had long been disaffected. 

It was composed of superb fellows, endowed with fine soldierly 

qualities; but under a corrupt system, discipline had become 

irregular and spasmodic, and the respect of the soldiers for the 

comparatively small number of European officers was rapidly 

diminishing. 

In the last twenty years, moreover, western civilization had 

made startling inroads in India. From 1848 to 1856 the brilliant 

Dalhousie had ruled India with a daring hand. He 

Dalhousiein t n ctt ^ ^ ^ 

India, 1848- had not only conquered the bikhs of the Punjab and, in 
1849, formally annexed their territories, but he had also, 
in 1852, fought out the second Burmese war to a successful issue 
and annexed Lower Burmah. He had, moreover, formally adopted 
the policy of annexing the protected states, whenever the extinc- 
tion of the direct line of a ruling house gave him the opportunity, 
refusing longer to recognize the Hindu custom of adoption. In 
this way he had seized and annexed three of the states of the once 
great Mahratta confederation, Sattara in 1849, and Nagpore and 
Jhansi in 1853. Poonah, another of the Mahratta states, that 
had made trouble in 1817, had already been annexed, and the last 
of the Peishwas had been established at Bithoor as a regular pen- 
sioner of the East India Company. In 1853 the Peishwa died, 
and his adopted son, the infamous Nana Sahib, claimed the patron- 
age of the company as heir by Hindu law. Dalhousie, however, 
had felt no obligation to continue the pension longer and left Nana 
without his portion. In 1856 Dalhousie had abolished the out- 
rageous despotism which the kings of Oudh had carried on since 



1028 DISSOLUTION OF THE OLD PARTIES [victobh 

1819; but in annexing their vast territories, he managed to 
antagonize the wealthy landed aristocracy of the kingdom. 

Not less radical had been Dalhousie's management of the domes- 
tic relations of his government; the great missionary societies had 
been encouraged to multiply their activ^ities; the railroad and the 
telegrapli had been introduced and rapidly extended; the Ganges 
Canal had been completed; and the Indian civil service had been 
thrown open to all British subjects, regardless of color or religion. 
These measures were commendable; but the energetic governor 
had not accounted sufficiently for the immobility of the oriental 
mind, and the rapidity with which his innovations had succeeded 
one another, had roused among the natives a feeling of uncer- 
tainty and resentment. The masses were deeply attached to the 
old order both by interest and by sentiment, and saw with no 
kindly feeling the progress of a revolution which threatened to 
overthrow the system which they had received from their fathers. 
Exaggerated accounts, also, of the mismanagement of the Crimean 
War began to reach India, and were eagerly seized upon by the 
disaffected elements, still further exaggerated, and industriously 
circulated as evidence of the declining prestige of England and the 
approaching downfall of British rule. 

Thus the mine was well prepared, when in the spring of 1857 
the new Enfield rifle was introduced into the English service. In 
order to load, it was necessary for the soldier to tear 
M^mm^"^^ off the end of the paper cartridge with his teeth. But 
unfortunately, in order to lubricate the cartridge and 
the better protect the powder from the dampness, the makers had 
used paper well soaked in grease. In this grease the suspicions of 
the Sepoys discovered a diabolical mixture of cow's fat and hog's 
lard, designed, as they thought, to force them to do violence to 
their religious faith, since neither Hindoo nor Mohammedan could 
touch the cartridge with his lips without defilement. In vain 
the authorities attempted to assure the troops of the innocence of 
the oiled paper, or to withdraw the cause of disturbance. Mutinous 
outbreaks spread from barrack to barrack, until in a short time 
all the middle and upper Granges was in uproar. 

Delhi, which was the residence of the aged descendant of the 



I 



1856] EXTENT OF MUTINY 1029 

Grand Mogul, became the center of the revolt in the north. The 
population of the newly annexed kingdom of Oudh rose in the 
name of their king, who was still a prisoner at Calcutta, 
^uiini^^ ^^^ ^'^^ flocked to the siege of Lucknow, where Sir Henry- 
Lawrence had withdrawn the resident garrison, consist- 
ing of a single regim.ent, into the Eesidency buildings in hope of 
holding out until relieved. At Cawnpore Nana Sahib placed 
himself at the head of the mutineers and also began the siege of 
the resident garrison. Everywhere the Sepoys inaugurated the 
rising by murdering the English officers and their families. At 
Delhi there was no foreign garrison, and the Sepoys had little 
trouble in overpowering the resident officers and their servants. 
At Cawnpore the garrison capitulated only to be massacred, but 
by some freak of pity or policy, some one hundred and thirty of 
the women and children were saved by order of Nana. 

Fortunately for the English the presidencies of the Lower 

Ganges were not affected. The Ghurkas of Nepal and the Sikhs 

of the Punjab also remained faithful, while the rulers 

Limit of the Qf Gwalior and Indore refused to ioin their mutinous 
risings. _ J 

troops. Fortunately, also, the British troops who had 
been occupied in the Persian war were returning; the army des- 
tined for the Chinese war was on the ocean, and when the trans- 
ports reached Cape Town, Sir George Grey, the governor at the 
Cape, assumed the responsibility of sending them to India. Thus, 
from all sides ample means were within reach for speedily crush- 
ing the revolt. The new governor-general. Lord Canning, son of 
the former minister, acted promptly and vigorously. By enlisting 
Sikhs and mustering the resident garrisons of the Punjab, he was 
able to dispatch an army from the northwest under John Nichol- 
son against Delhi. The siege, however, lasted from May to Sep- 
tember; and the city finally had to be carried by assault. In the 
meanwhile Henry Havelock, a soldier of the Cromwellian type, 
was fighting his way from lower Bengal to Cawnpore. His entire 
force amounted only to 1,500 men. Between the 7th and 16th of 
July in spite of the fierce heat, he marched one hundred and 
twenty-six miles and fought four engagements in the desperate 
hope of rescuing Nana's victims. But on news of Havelock's 



1030 DISSOLUTION" OF THE OLD PAETIES [victoria 

approacli two Sepoys with arms bared to the elbow and drawn 

swords entered the prison where the women and children who had 

been spared from the former massacre were crowded 

I^ ctsscicvc ati 

Cawnpore, together. When the next day Havelock's men entered 
the place the victims were gone, but the blood-plashed 
wainscoting and tlie reeking floors told of the pitiful struggle. 
The bodies were found in a well near by, where they had beea 
thrown, the dead and the still living. At the awful sight hard 
visaged men broke down. They had fought over those terrible 
hundred and twenty-six miles in the intense heat of an Indian 
summer, to see this. 

Colonel Neill remained to punish those who were responsible 
for the awful crime, while Havelock, with fresh troops that raised 
his column to 3,000 men, pressed on to Lucknow, 
Lucknow where the little garrison of 1,000 men from behind the 
walls of the Residency were standing off the whole male 
population of Oudh. The gallant Lawrence had been mortally 
wounded on June 1, and had committed the defense to General 
Inglis, with a dying injunction never to surrender. Havelock's 
progress in the face of the overwhelming odds against him was 
necessarily slow, and it was not until September 25 that he at 
last succeeded in fighting his way through the streets of the city 
and reaching the Residency, where the British flag still floated. 
His little band was too feeble to raise the siege, but he brought 
new strength and assurance to the besieged, and enabled them to 
keep up the defense. Tlie siege was not raised until November 
17, when Sir Colin Campbell with the reinforcements which 
had been sent from England, at last reached the city. The brave 
Havelock died on the 34th. 

Campbell was compelled to withdraw with the garrison to 
Cawnpore, before which he fought a successful battle on December 
6. In the spring he again marched upon Lucknow and 
i^ose of me carrying the city by storm, followed the retreating insur- 
gents to Bareilly, and there in May 1858 delivered a 
final, crushing blow. While Campbell was thus stamping out the 
war in Oudh, Sir Hugh Rose had advanced from the Bombay 
Presidency against the Mahrattas, and on June 16 fought the 



1858] END OF EAST INDIA COMPANY 1031 

last battle of the war before Gwalior. Thus ended this ferocious 
struggle between civilization and barbarism, in which the civilized 
European proved that he could be quite as merciless if not as 
treacherous, as his cruel enemy, marring his victories by ruthless 
massacres, blowing prominent prisoners to pieces at the cannon's 
mouth and hanging meaner folk by the hundred. Yet if the 
triumph of the victor was marked by acts of vengeance unknown 
to civilized warfare, his provocation was great. One bitter drop 
of disappointment, however, remained. The English never suc- 
ceeded ill catching Nana Sahib. He eluded his pursuers to the 
last, and probably died in the jungles of Nepal. 

Public sentiment at home was satisfied that the time had come 
for the abolition of the East India Company, and in 1858 the 
transient Derby ministry formally dissolved it and 
End of the transferred its political authority directly to the crown, 
Company. which was to act through a Secretary of State for India. 
The general administration was placed in the hands of 
a viceroy, although each province still retained its separate local 
government. The company's navy was abolished, bat its army 
was merged in the army of the empire. Lord Canning, the last 
governor-general of the company, became the first Viceroy of India, 
and remained in office until 1862. The queen, further, in order to 
quiet the country and allay the suspicions of the neighboring 
princes, formally disclaimed by proclamation any desire to seek 
new accessions of territory, and promised to maintain all existing 
treaties, to admit qualified Indians to office, to pardon all rebels 
who had not been connected with the massacres, to grant full 
religious toleration and to respect the ancient customs of her 
subjects. 

The English government, in the meanwhile, had not forgotten 
the quarrel with China, although operations for the moment 
had been delayed by the more serious struggle in India. In the 
rph. o„ «^^ summer of 1858 Canton was bombarded, the Taku forts, 
^ar'1858- which held the approach to Pekin, were seized, and the 
1862. Chinese forced to consent to the Treaty of Tientsin by 

which they opened a number of new ports to the English traders 
and allowed a British ambassador to take up his residence at 



1032 DISSOLUTIOlSr of the old parties [Victoria 

Pekin. In 1859 the war was again renewed; France, also, joined 
with England, and in 18G0 they compelled the Chinese to confirm 
the recent treaty and pay a war indemuity of £4,000,000. 

Before the China war had been well under way, the great war 
premier had temporarily come to grief at home. Curiously enough, 

the reason for dissatisfaction was not that he was too 
affair^fMs ^0^^ ^^ dealing with foreign powers, but that he was 

not bold enough. Orsini, an Italian refugee, had taken 
advantage of the safe harborage which London afforded him, to 
hatch a plot for the assassination of the emperor of the French. 
The bomb had missed the emperor; but it killed or wounded 
some one hundred and fifty bystanders. Fnblic opinion in France 
was greatly wrought up over the dastardly act, and the emperor, 
reasonably enough, demanded such a change in the laws of England 
as should make similar plots impossible in the future. Under 
ordinary circumstances the sympathies of the English people would 
probably have supported a minister who proposed to punish such 
an inexcusable crime as Orsini'sj but the furious attack of the 
French press and the vainglorious boasting of some French col- 
onels, who sent a formal address to the emperor asking him to 
permit his army to "destroy the infamous haunt where such 
infernal plots are hatched," roused the bitterest feelings in Eng- 
land, and when Palmerston brought in a "Conspiracy to Murder 
Bill," which made such a crime a penal offense whether commit- 
ted in England or out of England, the opposition took advantage 
of the popular clamor to denounce what they stigmatized as the 
cringing policy of the minister. His bill was beaten and he was 
forced to resign. 

The logical outcome of the resignation of Palmerston was a 
return to a conservative administration, and the queen recalled 

Derby and Disraeli. While the war scare lasted the 
Derby's new ministry had some showing of strength in the tre- 

second min- . 

istrij, 1858-9. mendons enthusiasm with which the whole nation took 
to drilling and organizing volunteer companies, — a 
patriotic but harmless activity, in which the ministers shrewdly 
encouraged the people. The ministry, however, never had the 
confidence of the Commons sufficient to command a majority. 



1859-18G5] THE AMEKICAN CIVIL WAR 1033 

and altliough Disraeli sought to gain favor with tlie Liberals by 
bringing in a bill which proposed to extend the £10 household 
franchise of the boroughs to the counties, his effort to "educate 
his party" as he called it, was not taken seriously. His proposal 
to give the franchise to university graduates, physicians, and law- 
yers, regardless of property qualifications, and to any one who could 
show a balance of £60 in a savings bank, was derided as a proposal 
to create "fancy franchises." The bill was lost on the second 
reading. An appeal was then made to the country and a new 
parliament summoned, but the very first division proved that the 
ministry was without the necessary majority and Derby and his 
colleagues resigned. 

The French war scare had now blown over, and the soher 
second thought of the people once more turned to the great leader 

who had brought them out of the Crimean War, and 
Paimerston^s carried them through the trying period of the Mutiny. 
try, 1859-1865. Palmerston accordingly returned, to remain in power 

until his death in 1865. These years were years of 
great anxiety; there were stirring times abroad, and although 
after the Chinese War, England remained at peace with the world, 
her foreign relations called for the exercise of a clear head and a 
steady baud. 

The year 1859 saw the interference of Napoleon III. in Italy, 
the overthrow of the Austrians at Magenta and Solferino, and the 

rapid advance of Italy to national unity under the lead 
secured, of the king of Sardinia and his able minister, Cavour. 

The year 1861 saw this movement finally consummated 
when an Italian parliament formally declared Victor Emmanuel 
King of Italy. 

The same year saw the outbreak of the American Civil War. 
England was deeply interested from the first. The blockading of 
Th Ameri- ^^® southern ports cut off her cotton mills from their 
can Civil supply of raw cotton and forced them to shut down; 

II a7- 1861-65. rf J ' 

Atmide of^ -^aggg were stopped ; thousands of operatives were 
people. thrown out of work and their families brought to the 

verge of starvation. All related business also suffered; and noth- 
ing but the generous gifts of private charity saved the great Lan- 



1034 DISSOLUTION OF THE OLD PAKTIES [victoria 

casliire mill district from distress as serious as that caused in 
Ireland by the potato famine. The relations of the two govern- 
ments remained, therefore, under serious tension during the whole 
course of the war. A noisy party who cared little for other than 
English interests, would have Palmerston actively interfere in 
order to separate the warring sections, but the starving operatives, 
although they believed that it would be a simple matter to send a 
British fleet to America, break the blockade and secure cotton and 
work in abundance, saw more clearly the real issue at stake, and 
determined that they would go without work and suffer, rather 
than be relieved by supporting the cause of slavery. 

The Palmerston ministry affected to respect the laws prescribed 
l^y civilized nations in such cases; but hastened to recognize the 
Confederate States as belligerents at the first oppor- 
Attitii'ic of tunitv. It certainly was not a friendly act, and 
tonMuuatnj. aroused great bitterness m the north. Yet the English 
had a right to place their sympathies where they 
would, and as the laws of nations go, the Confederate States 
could be justly recognized as belligerents. In 1861 the relations 
of the two governments were strained almost to the point of war 
as a result of the action of Captain Wilkes, a United States naval 
officer, whose name had been heretofore associated with a peaceful 
and all but forgotten exploring expedition in the southern Pacific. 
Wilkes had overhauled the British steamer Trent and taken from 
her Mason and Slidell, two Confederate envoys who had been 
sent by the Confederate government to England. The overzeal 
of Captain Wilkes undoubtedly put the Federal government in 
the wrong, and Palmerston promptly seized the opportunity to 
assert the majesty of the British flag, a course which probably any 
other foreign state not particularly friendly to the United States 
would have taken under the circumstances, poured troops into 
Canada and made a great bluster of his determination to have 
reparation or fight. Lincoln and Seward did the only thing to 
be done under the circumstances; they restored the arrested 
envoys and offered the apologies prescribed by the convention of 
nations under such cases. If, however, the British ministers 
were inclined to an ostentatious punctiliousness in observing the 



1865 1872] ALABAMA CLAIMS 1035 

laws of nations in dealing with the Federal government, they were 
not so careful in dealing with the Confederate cruisers which 
from time to time were fitted out in English ports for the purpose 
of preying upon Northern commerce. The United States at the 
time could not take action, but when the war was over the matter 
was taken up and pushed to a final settlement in the 
Claims" Geneva award of 1872; the Southern sympathies of 

SBttlGd 1872 

Palmerston's ministry cost the British government the 
sum of £3,000,000. 

Before the American War had closed, another war cloud had 
begun to rise in Germany. The desire for national unity which 

had been first quickened by the War of Liberation in 
of German 1813, had survived in spite of the repressive measures 

llTiXtlJ 

of the Metternichian system. In 1834 a very signifi- 
cant step had been taken in the direction of closer union by the 
formation of the Zollverein^ in which the German states Joined in 
a customs union for the purpose of securing free trade among 
themselves. Yet Austria, which was really an aggregation of 
many nationalities, had little interest in encouraging the desire for 
German national unity; and as long as she remained the dominant 
influence among the group of German states, the cause of national 
union could make little progress. But in 1861 William I. became 
king of Prussia. No such man had ascended the German throne 
since the days of the Great Frederick. He was a thorough Ger- 
man in all his sympathies, an untiring worker, and possessed a 
mind able to grasp correctly all the conditions of the problem 
which confronted Germany, and a sonl great enough to enter into 
the deep longing of the German people for unity, William, also, 
had the discernment to draw to his side two of the most remark- 
able men of the century, Bismarck and von Moltke. Through the 
one he addressed himself to the diplomatic problem; through the 
other to the military problem. As a result it was not long before 
Austria had been outwitted in the council chamber and out- 
fought on the battle field, and was at last respectfully bowed out 
of the German family house altogether, leaving William and Bis- 
marck to carry out their plans for securing German unity. 

As in the American War Palmerston showed little appreciation 



1036 DISSOLUTION OF THE OLD PARTIES [victoria 

of the real merit of the struggle, and in the first stages which fell 

within his ministry, was inclined to interfere. In this case, how- 
ever, as in the almost contemporary troubles in Poland, 

me^s^Zaau'^ in which Palmerston also thought himself called upon 

wiitv^^^'^^ to meddle, the officious minister received a humiliating 
snub, and after blustering somewhat was compelled 

to sit still and witness the making of German states out of the 

duchies of Schleswig and Holstein. 

On October 18, 1865 Palmerston died at his post, at the ripe 

age of eighty-one. In spite of his many faults, his fondness for 
"jingo" methods, his frequent rashness in speech and 

Death of action, his over confidence and frequent inclination to 

1865. ' needless meddling in the quarrels of others, he is yet 

the great figure of the middle years of Victoria's reign. 

No other minister since the death of William Pitt had so long 

enjoyed the confidence of the English nation. 



CHAPTEE IX 

THE RISE OF THE ISTEW DEMOCRACY. GLADSTONE AND THE 
SECOND ERA OF REFORM 

VICTORIA, 1865-1901 

The death of Palmerston marks the beginning of a new era in 
English politics. The Whigs of the middle class, who had carried 

through the Eeform Bill of 1832, had long since ceased 
ofiAberai- to represent the advanced political thought of the 

nation. They had taken their stand upon the results 
of that redoubtable struggle, and were as reluctant as the old 
Tories to consider any further extension of political rights among 
the people; their venerable chief. Lord John Eussell, the hero of 
the fight of 1832, had won the nickname of "Finality John" by 
the persistent way in which upon any and all occasions he had 
continued to assert the "finality" of that measure. Yet shrewder 
men like Disraeli had seen that further reform was inevitable, and 
even Lord Eussell at last had been compelled to leave his "final- 
ity" pedestal. A new revolution, in fact, had been quietly 
enlarging the whole sphere of English thought. The extensive 
introduction of the railroad and the steamboat, the penny post 
and the electric telegraph, the vast increase in the number and 
quality of books, the multiplication and cheapening of newspapers, 
the enlargement of existing ideals of education and the adoption 
of more rational methods, the granting of self government to the 
colonies, and the growth of a sense of unity and mutual interest 
among the widely extended members of the empire, had bred new 
conditions and brought in a whirl of new ideas. In this vigorous 
atmosphere had developed a new liberalism, founded ujDon con- 
fidence in the democracy and faith in the British Empire; a 
liberalism which, while it did not shrink from assuming the 

1037 



1038 THE SECOISTD EKA OF REFORM [victobia 

responsibility of empire, insisted that in administering the vast 
trust the government treat all with honesty and equal fairness, 
and that in order to guarantee an administration which should be 
fair to all, the government be so constituted as to represent all. 
While Palmerston lived, his long continued popularity, his 
commanding persouality, as well as the deep respect in which he 
was held by the younger members of his party, 
lAberaiand restrained the restless activity of his more radical fol- 
Whigs drift- lowers. Yct long before his death it had become evi- 

ing apart. = 

dent that the two wings of his party were rapidly 

drifting apart. The conservative wing that represented the old 

Whigs who had fought to bring the government into touch with 

the middle class, shrank from the idea of a government by the 

people, as Wellington and the older Tories had once shrunk from 

any interference with the "Clod given" system in vogue before 

1832. The liberal wing of the party, on the other hand, was 

drifting dangerously near the Chartist ground, boldly facing the 

responsibility of extending the suffrage, but with the suffrage, 

proposing also to extend the facilities of public education and 

rear a generation who should be worthy of the great trust of self 

government. 

While the wings of the Whig jiarty had been thus steadily 

drifting apart, the Tories had been moving as steadily forward 

toward conservative Whig ground. The older Toryism, 

Advance of -^yhich had rallied its shattered columns about the 

tltC nJfll's to 

(•'>!'■'< rnitive standard of Peel after the defeat of 1832, only to draw 
back and abandon him when he began the fight against 
the Corn Laws, could no longer shut their eyes to the abuses, the 
suffering and misery, inflicted by the ancient class laws upon the 
toiling masses of England and Ireland. The older immobile pol- 
icy, the blank quietus which ancient Toryism had for every project 
of reform, had, therefore, long since been abandoned for a more 
generous policy of conservative reform, and although the leaders 
hesitated to raise the Liberal's cry of "government by the people," 
they fully and cordially espoused the cause of "government for the 
people." Thus, even within the Conservative ranks the old stupid 
and selfish conservatism, which had drawn its breath in the atmos- 



1853-1865] GLADSTONE AND THE NEW LIBERALS 1039 

phere of privilege and vested interests, was rapidly giving way to 
an "enlightened paternalism." 

The new liberalism had found a natural spokesman in Glad- 
stone. He possessed a peculiarly organized mind, wonderfully 

gifted by nature and enlarged by studies in many 
the fields. He was deeply sympathetic, upright, just, 

the new incapable of simulation, and uncompromising in his 

hatred of all sham or charlatanry. During his long 
and successful career as administrator of the exchequer, he had 
been steadily progressing as a liberal leader. He had not hesitated, 
as new conditions offered the opportunity, in presenting his annual 
budget, to apply the free trade principle which since Peel's day 
had been an accepted tenet of the Whig party. Thus, in the 
famous budget of 1853, while retaining the income tax, he had 
boldly proposed the further reduction or repeal of the duties on 
some 270 different articles, in the retention of every one of which 
some powerful "interest" was concerned. In 1857 he had 
opposed his chief in the China War, and had Joined the opposition 
in registering the disapproval of parliament. Again, in 1861, he 
had led a determined fight against the old heavy tax on paper, and 
carried his point at last in the teeth of a serious opposition in the 
Lords. He had also recognized the justice of the demand of the 
unrepresented classes for a more generous recognition in parlia- 
ment, but while men like Disraeli and Russell were raising the 
cry of reform largely for political effect, he had been quietly 
probing existing evils and had come at last to the conviction that 
further parliamentary reform was not only inevitable but that it 
was the only sure and permanent means of betterment; and that 
it was to be regarded not as so much political treacle for catching 
voters, but as a great and holy cause to be advanced at the cost of 
place or preferment, if need be. The radical elements of the 
party, therefore, naturally looked to him as their leader. Palmer- 
ston had recognized his strength and predicted that he would be 
his successor, but had significantly added, "When he gets my 
place, we shall have strange doings." 

On the death of Palmerston little change was made in the min- 
istry. His war secretary, Lord John Russell, whose name had long 



1040 THE SECOND ERA OF REFORM [victobia 

been identified with the triumphs of the Whig party, was advanced 
to the vacant premiership, but Gladstone was now the con- 
trolling influence in the cabinet. It was ominous for 
mnEmr^^ the continued harmony of the Whig party, Eussell 
TheBefm-m himself had for ten years been committed to moderate 

iDlli Oj lobo. ^ 

reform, and it was not diflBcult for Gladstone to per- 
suade his chief to consent to reopen the dangerous issue. In 
the measure which was presented, Gladstone proposed to reduce 
the franchise qualification in counties to the possession of a £14 
holding and in boroughs to the possession of a £7 house; further, 
any man who could show a deposit in a savings bank of £50, of 
two years' standing, was also to be allowed to vote. The measure 
certainly was moderate enough ; at the utmost it could add only 
about four hundred thousand voters to those already enjoying the 
franchise. Its moderation, however, was its undoing. The 
radicals felt little enthusiasm in supporting it, while the Whigs 
of the Palmerston following broke away from their colleagues and 
united with the opposition. Eussell resigned, and Derby and 
Disraeli came back to office. Derby, however, was now well along 
in years, and the real management of the party fell largely to 
Disraeli. In February, 1868, Derby retired altogether. 

The Conservatives had come into power as the result of the 
opposition to Gladstone's reform bill ; but they in their turn were 
forced to face the dangerous problem and devise some measure 
which, while satisfying the popular demand, might yet avoid 
arousing the fears of the Conservatives who had no desire to 
increase the influence of the democracy in the House, Disraeli 
fully expected that the Liberals would oppose him simply as a 
matter of party spite; but he knew also that he would have no 

little difficulty in holding his own Conservatives 
Disraeli and together. He was careful, therefore, to outline his posi- 
tary reform, tion, which may be taken as a fair presentation of the 

platform of the new Conservative party. He was not 
opposed to reform, "for in a progressive country, change is 
inevitable;" the part of a Conservative leader is not to oppose all 
reform, but to see that reforms "are carried out in deference to 
the customs and traditions of the people." But as he understood 



1867, 1868] THE REFORM BILL OF 1867 1041 

these traditions, the government of England was founded upon 
the distinctions of classes; the franchise was a privilege, not a 
right, and should be bestowed only upon those who were fit to 
exercise such a high trust. He hoped that it might never be the 
fate of his country to live under a democracy. 

The measure which Disraeli finally proposed was a curiously 
complex scheme, devised v/ith characteristic cunning to fool the 

people and quiet the alarm of his followers. It pre- 
Disraeivs _ tended to give what it really withheld; it proposed to 
of 1867. extend the vote to a large class of the workingmen, 

but by a complicated scheme of double voting for the 
"higher classes," it proposed really to swamp the influence of the 
workingmen at the polls by the correspondingly increased influence 
of the wealthier classes. jSTot satisfied with this, Disraeli vir- 
tually proposed, also, to put into the hands of the wealthier classes 
in each parish the power to admit to the franchise as they saw fit. 
The plan was further cumbered by the old array of "fancy fran- 
chises" that had once before been laughed out of parliament. 
The House, however, felt the urgency of immediate action, and 
refused to support Gladstone in his proposal to make a minis- 
terial issue of the bill. Disraeli himself, although vague threats 
were thrown out of appealing to the country, had no idea of push- 
ing his elaborate scheme of "safeguards" to the alternative of 
victory or resignation, and declared himself very willing to receive 
suggestions or amendments from the House, a hint which the 
House was not slow to avail itself of, leaving the bill in its 
final form really more radical than the one which had turned out 
the Russell ministry in 1866. 

The amended bill, shorn of its safeguards and fancy franchises, 
received the royal assent August 15, 1867. The next year by 

other similar acts the principle of the bill was also 
Reform""'^^ applied to Scotland and Ireland. As in the acts of 
2865*'" ^'^^'^' 1832, real property was still regarded as the basis of the 

franchise; a man to vote must either own real property 
or rent real property. In application, however, the principle was 
greatly extended. In boroughs, in England and Scotland, any 
householder whose house was of sufficient value to be assessed for 



1042 THE SECOND EEA OF REFORM [victoria 

the local poor rates could vote; in Ireland, where a lower assess- 
ment prevailed, the property must pay a poor tax upon an assessed 
valuation of at least £4. In boroughs, in the three kingdoms, 
all male lodgers who could show a residence of one year and 
who paid at least £10 a year for unfurnished lodgings, could 
vote. In the counties the franchise was extended to all who 
owned land of an annual value of £5 ; but tenants in order to vote, 
in England or Ireland, must occupy land of at least £12 a year 
rental value; in Scotland, of at least £14 a year. Scotland, also, 
was allowed seven additional members, raising its representation in 
the House to sixty. Ireland was left as fixed by the acts of 1832. 
A successful attempt, also, was made to readjust the represen- 
tation in parliament in accordance with the growth of population. 
Eleven boroughs were disfranchised; thirty-five of less than 10,000 
inhabitants lost one member each ; the racant seats were divided 
between London and the great northern shires. The new prin- 
ciple of minority representation was also recognized; wherever 
three members were to be returned, the voter was allowed to vote 
for two only. The "Second Reform Acts," as they are called, 
mark an important stage in the progress of Great Britain towards 
democracy. In the boroughs virtually any man who could earn 
a living was entitled to vote; while in the counties the farm 
laborer was almost the only man left without the franchise, 
Disraeli in adopting household suffrage had thus stolen the pow- 
der of the Liberal party, and they had not dared to oppose him. 
The Conservatives, however, were not pleased; Derby had called 
it a leap in the dark; others of Disraeli's colleagues had resigned 
in disgust, among them the Colonial Secretary, Lord Carnarvon, 
and the Secretary for India, Lord Cranbourne.^ 

While press and public were eagerly watching the first stages 
of the contest for parliamentary reform, a matter of hardly less 
moment to the future of the empire had quietly pushed its way 
through parliament and had become a law almost unnoticed. This 
measure was the now famous "British American Colonies Confed- 
eration Act," which empowered the British Colonies of North 

^ Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne Cecil, Viscount Cran bourne, but 
after April 12, 18G8, Marquis of Salisbury. 



1867, 1868] CANADIAN" FEDERATION 1043 

America to form themselves into a federation to be known as the 

"Dominion of Canada. " By this act, in November, the two Canadas 

which had been united in 1840, were organized with 

The '•British jSCova Scotia and New Brnnswick under a federal ffov- 

American . " 

coionioiCon- ernment with full powers for the resrulation of "Cur- 
ff^issT^^^'^^ reucy. Customs, Excise, and Eevenue generally; for the 

adoption of a uniform postal system; and for the man- 
agement and maintenance of public works and properties of the 
Dominion; for the adoption of a plan of military organization and 
defense; for the introduction of uniform laws respecting the 
naturalization of aliens and the assimilation of criminal law."^ 
Not of least importance among the duties imposed by the act 
upon the Dominion Parliament was the construction of the Inter- 
colonial Railway. Later were added Manitoba and British Colum- 
bia with the Northwest Territory, which extended the jurisdiction 
of the Dominion Government to Alaska and the Arctic Ocean. 

The foreign relations of the Derby-Disraeli ministry were quiet 
enough. Austria was expelled from Germany by Prussia and 

from Italy by Victor Emanuel; but England was no 

The Abiis- j j ^ o ^ . 

sinianwar longer concerned in the misfortunes of her ancient ally. 

of if^fiR 

In the year 1868, an expedition numbering 12,000 troops 
from the Indian army was sent under General Napier to compel 
Theodore, an Abyssinian king, to release some British subjects, 
whom he had imprisoned. The prisoners were released and the 
column retired as quickly as possible. King Theodore, a brave 
and reckless barbarian, slew himself in chagrin at being humiliated 
before his people. 

A series of outbreaks in Ireland, in the meanwhile, had once 
more forced the Irish problem into the foreground. Since the 
potato famine and the breaking up of the Young Ireland 
''^e?iian" party, the land had been comparatively quiet. The 
1863-67. thousands of Irishmen, however, who had come to 

America had not forgotten the kindred whom they had left behind. 
In 1863 a secret society was organized with a membership both in 

^ From speech of the Governor-General on opening the first Parlia- 
ment of the Confederation, Nov. 7, 1867. Annual Register, 1867, Part I., 
pp. 281 and 283. 



1044 THE SECOiSTD ERA OF REFORM [victoria 

Ireland and the United States, called tlie "Irish Republican 
Brotherhood," but better known by the more popular name of 
"Fenians," an Anglicized form of the name of the followers of 
Finn, or Feona, the legendary king of Erin, who occupied some 
such place in Irish legend as King Arthur's knights in British 
legend. The purpose of the order was revolationary ; and in 1865, 
when Eussell was Prime Minister, their plans were divulged and 
several arrests were made. O'Donovan Rossa, an editor of the 
"Irish People," was sentenced to a life imprisonment. The Habeas 
Corpus Act was suspended in Ireland and many Irish leaders fled 
to America. Here they laid plans for an invasion of Canada in 
the hope of embroiling Great Britain and the United States in a 
quarrel on their account. In May 1866 some twelve hundred men 
crossed the Niagara river. The expedition was poorly managed 
and easily discouraged by the determined front of the local militia; 
while the disavowal of the United States Government took from 
the leaders their only possible hope of success. Other revolts no 

more successful followed in Ireland. The next year 
Decemhei; [^^ December an attempt was made to rescue several 

Fenian prisoners from Clerkenwell by blowing out the 
walls of the prison. The attempt was unsuccessful, but many 
innocent persons were killed or injured by the explosion, and 
London was thoroughly frightened. 

The Liberal leaders fully believed that they could quiet Ireland 
only by removing the causes of grievance, the chief of which at 

the time were the enforced support of the Protestant 
Giadsume Episcopal Church of Ireland by the Irish peasantry, 
^868^^^'^' ^^^^ ^^^ system of rack rents, by which the tenantry 

were left to the mercy of the landlords. Disraeli 
stoutly resisted every proposition to disestablish the Irish Protes- 
tant Church, and after an unsuccessful appeal to the new constitu- 
encies that had been created by his recent reform bills, in 
December 1868 he resigned, and Gladstone became Prime Min- 
ister. Gladstone's majority enabled him at once to carry out 
his proposed plan of disestablishment; the church courts were 
abolished and the Irish bishops were deprived of their seats in the 
House of Lords; the churches, cathedrals, parsonages, and all 



1860-1870] THE IRISH LAND ACT 1045 

private endowments which had been given to the Irish Episcopal 
Church since 1660, were left in its hands, but it became henceforth 
a free church ; the clergy, also, were compensated for their life 
interests. The anomaly of the Irish Episcopal establishment was 
generally conceded, and the great body of English Protestants as 
well as Catholics recognized the wisdom and justice of the Act of 
Disestablishment. A far more serious problem, how- 

The Act of 

Disestablish- ever, confronted Gladstone in the Irish land ques- 
tion. In Ireland, as in England, rents were fixed by free 
competition. In Ireland, however, the competition among land- 
lords for tenants was largely theoretical, while the competition 
among tenants for land was a grim fact. Hence in Ireland it was 
quite impossible for the tenant to meet his landlord on equal 
terms. The landlord, therefore, generally made what terms he 
chose with his would-be tenant, compelling him, ordinarily, to 
make all improvements, even to the erection of buildings, and sub- 
jecting him to eviction on six months notice. If the tenant should 
prove to be thrifty and enterprising and should seek to improve 
his land, the temptation was strong for the landlord to exact in 
increased rents all that the improvements were worth, or, since 
the improvements belonged to the landlord,^ to evict upon the 
slightest pretext, or upon no pretext at all, in order to get the full 
advantage of his improved estates. 

In 1870 Gladstone bravely took in hand the knotty Irish land 

question. He proposed to recognize the claim of an outgoing 

tenant to receive some compensation for improvements : 

The^'lrish , , ^ . ^ ' 

Land Act" tenants, also, who were evicted for any cause other 

of 1870. 

than nonpayment of rent, were to be entitled to dam- 
ages. He further proposed, by lending public money to those who 
wished to buy their farms to put it into the hands of Irish ten- 
ants to escape permanently from the tyranny of the landlord. 
Gladstone had great confidence in the "Land Act" and fully 
believed that he had settled the Irish land question. But he 
had not yet fathomed the depths of the greed of the landlord. 

' This was the general custom. In the north of Ireland where the 
"Ulster custom" prevailed, the outgoing tenant might sell his improve- 
ments to the incoming tenant. 



1046 THE SECOND EEA OF REFORM [victoma 

The landlord simply raised the rent of the undesirable tenant 
until it passed beyond his ability to pay, and then turned him out 
upon the charge of nonpayment, when, by the condition of the 
Land Act, the tenant forfeited all interest in his improvements. 
The purchase clause of the act likewise proved to be of little 
value, since landlords were never willing to sell. 

The same year saw the inauguration by the Liberal ministry 
of another reform which was destined to be more fruitful in 
results. It was felt that the simple extension of the 
fcmimuca^ franchise was nob sufficient; but that it ought to be 
^1870^^^'" followed by some consistent and far reaching plan 
for public education. William E. Forster, the vice- 
president of the council, took up the matter and succeeded in 
pushing through the "Elementary Education Act." Since 1839 
the education grant had been regularly administered by the com- 
mittee of the Privy Council. The grant had been increased from 
time to time until in 1859 it had reached £1,000,000. This 
money had been used in supporting training colleges for teachers, 
building schoolhouses, and maintaining schools. In 1862 an 
unwise measure had made grants for the maintenance of schools 
conditional on the success of the pupils in passing prescribed 
tests. This was a good thing for the best schools, but the dis- 
tricts that were most in need of help were shut out by the tests 
and for ten years there was little increase in the annual appropria- 
tion. Forster now proposed to allow any district to elect its 
own school board and levy a local rate to support its school ; it might 
also compel the attendance of the children. Teachers were to be 
allowed to read and explain the Bible; but the time for such an 
exercise must be fixed and regular, and parents who wished might 
keep their children away. In no instance, however, was the 
teaching of the catechism or the creed of any particular church 
to be allowed. The bill was bitterly opposed by some Dissenters, 
bat on the whole was well received and marks a most important 
advance in English public school education. 

In 1871 Cardwell, Gladstone's war minister, presented the 
first of a series of important army reforms, one of which proposed 
to abolish the old absurd system of purchasing army commissions. 



1871-1873] THE JUDICATtrEE ACT, 1047 

The army influence, naturally conservative in such a matter, made 
a desperate fight, and so obstructed the bill that the ministry 
Army ^^^ obliged to gain its object by advising the 

reforms. queen to cancel the royal warrant by which the pur- 
chase of commissions had been authorized. An "Army Enlist- 
ment Act" shortened the term of service from twenty-one years 
to six years with the regiment and six years in the reserve. 
Direct control over the militia and volunteers, which, since the 
reign of Mary, had been vested in the lords-lieutenant of the 
counties, was now placed in the hands of the crown and was fol- 
lowed by a reorganization of the army upon a territorial basis. 
The regiments were named from their counties ; the militia and 
volunteers of the county became battalions of the county regi- 
ment. The commander-in-chief of the army was placed directly 
under the control of the war office. 

In 1872 the government attempted to prevent bribery at elec- 
tion by the "Ballot Act," which by making the voting for mem- 
The'^Baiiot ^®^^ ^^ parliament secret, prevented the buyer of votes 
^<^'-" from knowing whether the voter had fulfilled his part 

of the agreement or not. In 1873 Lord Selbourne, the Chan- 
cellor, brought forward the "Judicature Act" which 

The "Judi- 

catureAct," merged the old courts of Common Pleas, Kings Bench, 
Exchequer, and Chancery, into one Supreme Court of 
Judicature, but still subject to the ultimate appellate authority of 
the House of Lords. The result has been greatly to cheapen and 
simplify the processes of law, by removing the old lines which 
centuries of custom had drawn between the ancient courts. 

While the Gladstone ministry was thus in almost bewildering 
rapidity bringing forward reforms at home, most important events 
were crowding upon each other on the continent. The Franco- 
Prussian War had broken out in 1870, and before the march of the 
German legions the second French empire had melted away. 
The overthrow of Napoleon and the establishment of the present 
French Republic, however, were not the most significant results of 
the war. All Germany had rallied to the support of King Wil- 
liam of Prussia; an intense national enthusiasm had taken posses- 
sion of all classes, and would be satisfied only by the union of all 



1048 THE SECOND ERA OF REFORM [victoria 

the German states in a great German federal state with the King 
of Prussia as its hereditary sovereign. The King of Italy was 
also quick to seize the opportunity offered by the troubles of 
France. He moved uj)on Eome, and putting an end to the tem- 
poral power of the pope made the ancient city, at last, the capital 
of a united Italy. These two events, the unification of Germany 
and the unification of Italy, mark the culmination of the two most 
significant movements in continental history since the close of the 
first Napoleonic era. 

In its attitude toward these foreign struggles, the Gladstone 
ministry, in accordance with modern Liberal ideas, had attempted 
to carry out a high-minded and unselfish policy. Granville, the 
Foreign Secretary, insisted upon the neutrality of Belgium; but 
when Eussia announced her determination to repudiate the pledges 
which she had made at Paris in 185G, with France and Germany 
at war, there was nothing left for England but to submit and 
quietly strike out of the treaty the clauses which Russia had 
declared invalid. The same ministry saw also the long pending 
dispute with the United States over the Alabama claims, settled by 
the Geneva award, June, 1872. 

The first ministry of Gladstone had now run a remarkable 

career. He had taken up and carried to a successful issue about 

every reform which had thus far occupied the attention 

The fall of ^^ ^^^^ generation, and there was danger, apparently, that 

the first Glad- ^s the head of a reform ministry, he would soon be 
st07ie minis- J ' 

try, 1874. without a brief. Disraeli, with his inimitable power 
of phrase-making, had sneeringly alluded to the 
thorough way in which the ministry had cleared off the reform 
docket by referring to the ministers as they sat on the treasury 
bench before him, as "a row of extinct volcanoes." The country, 
moreover, was weary of reform. Many severely criticized Glad- 
stone's foreign policy as weak and truckling. Many Dissenters, 
also, were not pleased with the Elementary Education Bill, and 
when in 1873, in order to find some neutral ground upon which all 
parties in Ireland might stand without quarreling, Gladstone pro- 
posed to establish a secular University at Dublin, in which neither 
theology, nor history, nor philosophy, should be taught, the very 



1874-1877 j DISEAELI lif POWER 1049 

elements whom he sought to serve turned upon him and defeated 
the bill. Gladstone at once resigned, and although the refusal of 
Disraeli to take office kept Gladstone in power a few months 
longer, when the Conservative gains in the election of 1874 left no 
further doubt as to the drift of public sentiment, Gladstone again 
resigned and Disraeli once more came into power. 

Disraeli had now been before the country thirty years. His 
party, however, had always been in the minority and although at 

three different times the Conservatives under the nom- 
the nation inal leadership of Derby had been permitted to form a 
ativeprogres- ministry, it was always as a sort of "stop-gap ministry" 

and had never been allowed to stay long enough to 
accomplish anything. The reform bill of 1867 had really been 
the work of the Liberal opposition, and the Conservative ministry 
had simply submitted. Now, however, it was evident that the 
great mass of the people .were coming to look with suspicion upon 
further reforms and that the times were ripe for a successful min- 
istry based upon a policy of "rest from violent changes," "good 
administration," practical improvements, and a more vigorous 
foreign policy in which the larger interests of the empire should 
be the first care. 

The outbreak of new troubles between the Turks and their 
European subjects soon afforded the ministry a chance to show 

what it could do in the way of protecting English 
Theouthreak interests abroad. In 1875 the Christian population of 

of IVQ/}^ f}&~ 

tween Russia Herzegovina rose against the Turks; the neighboring 

and.Turkey, .^^ ^ , . ., -, . , 

1877. provinces also were soon thrown into wild ferment. The 

Turks began to put down these uprisings with their 
customary ferocity, and their cruelties, particularly those per- 
petrated in Bulgaria, once more stirred the resentment of Europe. 
The most natural thing under the circumstances would have been 
for the British ministry to give Russia a free hand in forcing the 
Turk to grant the reforms which the provinces in revolt demanded. 
But the ministers, still under the sway of the Conservative tradi- 
tions of the past, saw in such a course the inevitable overthrow of 
the Turkish empire and a vast accession of power if not of actual 
territory for Russia in southeastern Europe. Yet in the present 



1050 THE SECOND ERA OF REFORM [victoru 

state of public opinion it would not do to repeat the Crimeau War 
and a second time protect Turkey against the demands of Russia. 
The only hope, therefore, of a happy solution of .the puzzling 
question was to secure the cooperation of all the powers in enforc- 
ing reforms upon Turkey. The attempt was made, but failed, 
owing partly to the stolid determination of the Turkish govern- 
ment not to yield, and partly to the refusal of England to agree to 
some definite aggressive action on the part of the powers. This 
was a blunder diplomatically, since it left the Russian government 
to declare war upon Turkey on her own account, and precipitated 
the very issue which the Conservative ministry wished to avoid. 
In June 1877 the Russians crossed the Danube, and began the 
occupation of Bulgaria. The Turks made a brave stand at Plevna 
and from behind its vast earthworks held the Russian army at bay 
until December, when their works were finally carried by assault 
and the Russians poured through the passes of the Balkans. Con- 
stantinople was practically without defenses and its occupation by 
the Russians seemed imminent. If Turkey were saved, action 
must be taken at once, and accordingly Disraeli, who had been 
raised to the peerage in 1876 as Earl of Beaconsfield, dispatched 
a powerful English fleet into the eastern Mediterranean, called out 
the reserves in England, and ordered Sepoy regiments from India 
to Malta. The Foreign Secretary, Lord Derby, who was not in 
sympathy with a course that promised war between England and 
Russia, resigned, and Lord Salisbury was put in his place. 

In the meanwhile, on March 3, 1878, Russia and Turkey had 
already agreed upon a peace at San Stefano, the conspicuous fea- 
ture of which was the proposed formation of an inde- 
San Stefano, . ^ *• 

March 3, pendent Bulgaria out of the regions lying between the 

Danube and the upper Aegean. To this Beaconsfield 
objected because, in the first place, such a state would cut European 
Turkey in two, and in the second place would virtually bring 
Russia to the Aegean, since from the first the new state must 
necessarily be devoted to Russian interests. He accordingly con- 
tinued his preparations for war; the opposition protested and 
Gladstone with his fiery appeals awoke the country. Yet Beacons- 
field for once had his way; he forced Russia to consent to submit 



1878] THE CONGRESS OF BERLIN 1051 

the treaty of San Stefano to the approval or modification of a con- 
gress of the powers to be called at Berlin. The now famous 

congress met in June 1878 ; Beaconsfield and Salisbury 
of Berlin. ' represented Great Britain. Before the meeting, how- 

ever, Kussia and Great Britain had come to an under- 
standing by which the proposed Bulgaria was to be broken up as fol- 
lows: (1) Bulgaria between the Balkans and the Danube was to have 
autonomy but was to be tributary to Turkey ; (2) Bulgaria south of 
the Balkans, Eastern Eoumelia, was to be allowed administrative 
autonomy, but under a Christian Pasha; (3) Montenegro, Servia, 
and Roumania were to be independent and to receive new acces- 
sions of territory; (4) Eussia was to be allowed to extend her fron- 
tiers to the mouth of the Danube and be given Kars and Batoum 
in Asia, though Batoum was not to be fortified; (5) Turkey was to 
carry out reforms which for the future should secure her Christian 
subjects in Crete and Armenia. In return for this friendly inter- 
ference and for the further guarantee of the protection of the 
Asiatic dominions of the Turk against Russia, the Porte gave Eng- 
land control of the island of Cyprus, thus adding one more to the 
list of English milestones on the way to India up the Mediter- 
ranean. The Congress of Berlin did little more than ratify the 
terms of the amended Treaty of San Stefano ; Beaconsfield returned 
highly satisfied with his work, having, as he declared, "secured 
peace with honor." In the main object of his policy he had suc- 
ceeded; he had secured British interests in the east. But to this 
he had sacrificed the interests of the Christian population who 
still groaned under the tyranny of the Turk; he had made pos- 
sible all the later atrocities in Armenia and Crete, and prepared 
the way for future war between Greece and Turkey. Yet it is 
fair to ask, if Russia were not to be allowed to take possession of 
Constantinople and herself expel the Turk from Europe, what more 
could have been accomplished? 

The Beaconsfield ministry had now reached high-water mark. 
The noisy bluster of the "Jingoes" who had supported the min- 
ister's high-handed dealing with Russia, their boastful talk of the 
power of English armies, or the prestige of the English navy, their 
vaunting confidence in the future of the British Empire aud their 



1052 THE SECOND EKA OF EEEORM [victoria 

cold-blooded assumption of the paramount importance of its inter- 
ests to all considerations of justice or right in dealing with other 

nations, could not long prevent the conscience of the 
Decline of ^ British people from getting a hearing, especially with 
influence. sucli a mentor as Gladstone to rouse it to new activity. 

The studied ostentation with which Beaconsfield had 
conducted his administration, the fanfare of trumpets with which 
each new achievement had been announced to the public, had for 
a time influenced a certain class of minds. But the interest of 
the people was now flagging; a wave of commercial depression 
swept over the country; nor could the addition of the ostentatious 
"Empress of India" to the simple but majestic titles which gener- 
ations of Englishmen, heretofore, had thought good enough for 
their sovereigns, or the efi'ort to establish English influence in 
Afghanistan, where aii English army was sent to force an envoy 
upon the reluctant Ameer, simply because he had seen fit to receive 
one from Eussia, or an attempt to draw the South African States 
into a confederation after the Canadian pattern, or the annexation 
of the Transvaal, or a war with the Zulus, prevent the attention of 
the public from turning once more to the consideration of urgent 
needs at home. In the election of March 1880 Beaconsfield 
attempted to rally the Conservatives by appealing to their old time 
fear of radicalism, painting in lurid colors the mischief that would 
follow should theEadicals again come into poAver. But Gladstone 
in his magnificent Midlothian campaign, in which he exposed with 
telling effect the many vulnerable points of Beaconsfield's foreign 
policy, carried everything before him, and returned to office with 
a powerful Liberal majority. Beaconsfield died the next year, 
leaving the leadership of his party to the Marquis of Salisbury. 

Gladstone was now stronger than when he had taken office 
twelve years before. He had a clear majority of fifty votes over 

the Conservatives and Irish Home Rulers combined. 
Gladstone's He secured the Radicals of his own party by giving posi- 
try,is8o-s5. tions to Bright, Fawcett, and Dilke, while he made 

Joseph Chamberlain, "the reforming mayor of Birm- 
ingham," President of the Board of Trade. Dilke and Chamber- 
lain were Radicals of the now school, who unlike the followers of 



1880-1885] Gladstone's secoi^d ministry 1053 

the Manchester school, believed in a vigorous interference on the 
part of the state, not only as a remedy iu domestic evils, but also in 
colonial and foreign affairs. The "extinct volcanoes," which had 
so aroused Disraeli's mirtli in 1873, were soon in full eruption 

again. The "Burials Act" tore away almost the only 

remaining shred of the tissue of legislation by which 
ancient bigotry had once sought to bind the limbs of nonconform- 
ity, allowing the nonconformists the use of churchyards for 
funeral purposes. By the "Employers' Liability Act," the 
employer was made responsible for the results of carelessness or 
negligence in subjecting workmen to unnecessary danger. By the 
"Grand Game Act," the crops of tenants were preserved from the 
inroads of such pests as the hares and rabbits that had been here- 
tofore protected for the master's hunting. Ireland, also, where 
experience had revealed the weak points of the earlier Liberal 
legislation, early attracted the attention of the ministry, which 
in almost its first legislation attempted to secure a law 
that would allow a tenant who was evicted for nonpayment of 
rent to recover "compensation for disturbance." The Lords 

defeated this important provision, but the next year 
The"Second the "Sccond Irish Land Act" was more successful. 
Act." This act formally recognized the co-proprietorship of 

the tenant in the land which he tilled, and allowed him 
to sell his interest to the highest bidder; it established aland 
court to fix rent by judicial action, the action to be revised every 
fifteen years ; it further gave the tenant a right to apply to this 
court at any time. These regulations, which in many respects 
were a distinct return to older feudal ideas, show the despair of 
the ministers of ever dealing with the Irish trouble justly or satis- 
factorily by applying principles which ordinarily regulate the rela- 
tions of landlord and tenant. 

These measures, acceptable as they would have been in 1870, did 
not satisfy the Irish leaders who wanted to abolish "landlordism" 
The"Land 9,ltogether. They had organized a "Land League," by 
League." which they proposed to gain their end through a system 
of terrorism, waylaying landlord or agent or constable, and leav- 
ing the dead body as a mute testimony of the danger of offend- 



1054 THE SECOND ERA OF REFORM [victoria 

ing the League. A far more efficient as well as less dangerous 
metliod of intimidation was devised in the "boycott," so called 
from the name of the first victim, Captain Boycott, the agent of 
Lord Earne. Side by side with the war against landlords, the old 
agitation for Home Eule was also revived, finding its champion 
in Charles Stewart Parnell, a man of ability and resolution, and 
without scruples in selecting methods. Home Eule, however, for 
the time was hopelessly confused in the public mind with Land 
Leaguism, and leaders like Parnell naturally fell under the dis- 
approval which was aroused by the murders and outrages ascribed 
to the League. Forster, the Irish secretary, was goaded to des- 
peration by the inability of the government to bring the perpe- 
trators of the secret murders to justice, and in 1881 in spite of 
bitter opposition pushed through parliament his "Protection for 
Life and Property Act," which empowered the government to 
arrest and imprison without trial persons "reasonably suspected." 
Parnell, Dillon, and some fifty more of the Irish leaders were 
arrested and thrown into Kilmainham jail. The Land League 
responded by issuing a manifesto which forbade tenants to pay 
rent altogether. The government replied by a direct attack upon 
the League itself as "an illegal and criminal association." 

Gladstone, apparently, now thought that his subordinate had 

gone too far, and in 1882 released Parnell and his fellow prisoners 

from Kilmainham jail ; he had first, however, come to an 

The pjwrMix understanding witli them that they would support. the 

Parkmur- , • •, p. , , • . -, ti , 

ders, 1882. government m its eftort to iritroduce liberal measures 

and bring order out of the chaos. Forster resigned in 

disgust, and Lord Frederick Cavendish was appointed to succeed 

him. The new secretary had hardly arrived in Ireland before he, 

with the permanent Under-secretary, Thomas Henry Burke, was 

set upon in Phoenix Park by representatives of a secret society 

called the "Invincibles," and stabbed to death. All thought of 

conciliation was abandoned. A "Prevention of Crimes Act," 

authorized the government to examine witnesses secretly and to 

try suspected persons before a special jury. A "gag law" was 

also passed by the Commons for its own government, designed 

to check Llie obstructive tactics which Parnell had adopted in the 



1881] 



THE BOEE WAE 



1055 



House and which, supported by the Irish vote, he had used to con- 
siderable purpose. 

While the ministers were thus heroically grappling with the 
Irish problem, they were compelled to face another series of no 

less perplexing problems connected with the wars 
wai^'^Maiu- ^^^^ ^^^^ fallen to them as a result of the high- 
27'mi'^^^^' ^i^ii'^^d foreign policy of Beaconsfield. The heart of 

the great Liberal premier was not in these wars; 
yet to withdraw from them required great moral courage as well 
as wisdom. The Afghans had overwhelmed a British army at 




Maiwan, but in 1880 the famous march of General Roberts, 
"Bobs," from Kabul to Kandahar and the defeat of the 
Afghans at Pir Paimal, afforded an opportunity to retire from 
the country with dignity, and the Afghans were left to them- 



1056 THE SECO^sTD EEA OF REFORM [victoria 

selves. The annexation of the Transvaal, also, had been followed 
by a revolt of the Boers, who had no desire to lose their independ- 
ence for the sake of consolidating English power in South Africa. 
The British soldier made but a poor showing in conflict with the 
Boer, who was far better skilled in the art of frontier warfare, and 
after a series of disasters, an English army was cut to pieces at 
Majuba Hill and their commander Sir George Colley killed. A 
large English force under General Wood was at hand, but Glad- 
stone was unwilling to continue the further waste of human life in 
a struggle in which he from the first felt that right was on the side 
of the Boers, and accordingly ended the war by granting them 
substantial independence. Unfortunately, for the sake of salving 
British pride he retained a vague suzerainty over the Transvaal. 
As the sequel has shown this was a mistake. It would have been 
better either to have renounced all authority or to have pressed 
the vmr to the last issue. 

A still more formidable trouble confronted the government in 

Egypt. In 1863, Ismail, the grandson of the old Mehemet Ali of 

the Palmerston days, had become Viceroy, or Khedive, 

Egypt, Ena- of Egypt. He was a progressive man and anxious to 

land and the . , , , , . ,..,.,. . . 

Suez Canal introduce western enterprise and civilization into 
Egypt. He encouraged Ferdinand de Lesseps in his 
scheme of cutting a ship canal across the Isthmus of Suez and saw 
the great work finally opened in 1869. Ismail's daring schemes, 
however, had run far ahead of his ability as a financier. The 
wretched peasantry of Egypt, the fellaJiin, upon whom rested the 
crushing burden of his telegraphs and railroads, his harbors and 
his canals, his army and his fleets, were entirely unable to meet 
the ever increasing demands of the government, and in 1875 the 
Khedive was compelled to sell to England his share in the canal. 
The money, however, only brought a temporary relief; and in 
1879 Ismail tried to shake himself loose from foreign control, but 
failed, and was deposed in favor of his son, Tewfik; England and 
France entered into a dual protectorate, or control of the country. 
This was the condition of things when Gladstone assumed power 
in 1880. The native Egyptians resented the subjection of their 
country to foreigners; they were Jealous of the French and Eng- 



1882-1884] EliTGLAND IN EGYPT 1057 

lish army officers and engineers, who as usual had begun to displace 
the natives in the employ of their own government, and in 1882 
the discontented elements rallied about an Egyptian soldier, known 
to the world as Arabi Pasha, organized an insurrection, and seized 
the forts which commanded the harbor and city of Alexandria. 
The Khedive was powerless to protect his people ; rioting, pillage, 
and violence followed in the city. France, who was ill at ease over 
the growing influence of England in Egypt, refused to assist in 
maintaining order and left England to settle affairs as best she 
could. An English fleet was sent to Alexandria, and in July 
Admiral Seymour bombarded the city; troops were landed, and 
finally in September General Wolseley wound up the 
^nt of Alex- affairs of Arabi at Tel-el-Kebir. The Khedive's nom- 
Juiij^%8'' ^"^^ authority was restored, but Egypt has remained 
since virtually under English control, and when the 
day comes for the dismemberment of the Sultan's dominions, 
Egypt with enough of Syria to secure the canal, will probably be 
England's share of the partition, thus adding the last stepping 
stone through the Mediterranean to India. 

The end, however, was not yet; the weakening of the Khe- 
dive's power had encouraged a great religious uprising among the 

Mohammedan population of the upper Nile. The 
The Soudan. ^ '■ 

Gordon's movement gathered about a mysterious fanatic known 
expedition. i nr t ■ 

as the Mahdi, or the expected prophet," who accord- 
ing to certain Mohammedan sects is to appear on the earth in the 
last days and reduce the whole world to the reign of righteousness 
after the Mohammedan idea. In November, 1883, an Egyptian 
_ army under an English officer known as Hicks Pasha, 

Kashgil,No- -^ ° ' 

vembers, was defeated by the Mahdi and Hicks slain, and the 
whole Soudan virtually passed into the hands of the 
fanatics. Gladstone had no wish to assume responsibility for the 
government of the wild and lawless Soudan, yet he could not 
leave the few Egyptian garrisons that still remained faithful to be 
exterminated by the fanatical followers of the Mahdi, and in Jan- 
uary 1884 dispatched Charles George Gordon on his fatal errand 
to arrange for the withdrawal of the Egyptian garrisons from the 
Soudan. Gordon, who had begun his career as an engineer 



1058 THE SECOISTD ERA OF REFORM [Victoria 

officer, had had a wide experience with the barbaric races of the 
Orient. In 1864 he had performed a great service for the Chinese 
government in putting an end to the Taiping revolt; a service 
which had fastened upon him the name of "Chinese Gordon." 
He was well known in the Soudan, where, from 1874 to 1879, as 
representative of the Egyptian government, he had made strenuous 
efforts to put a stop to the slave trade. He reached Khartoum 
unarmed and almost unattended. He saw at once that it was use- 
less to attempt to treat with the Mahdi and sent for military 
assistance. Gladstone, however, still shrank from the enterprise, 
and hesitated to send an army to the Soudan, until the Mahdi's 
hordes began to close upon the city and the popular outcry 
against leaving Gordon to his fate compelled him to act. In 
August 1884 General Wolseley was sent up the Nile 
WoUeiey with a relieving force. After five mouths of super- 
Khartoum, human toil, on the 28th of January 1885, a flying 
1885. ' column which Wolseley had sent ahead, reached Khar- 

toum, only to find that the city had been betrayed 
two days before and Gordon slain. After some pretense of a 
more energetic handling of the Soudan question, the English 
troops were withdrawn to the Egyptian frontier, and the remain- 
ing garrisons left to make the best terms they could with the 
Mahdi. 

The natural reaction which attended the unfortunate outcome 
of the Soudan affair, greatly weakened the hold of the Gladstone 
administration upon the country. But the appearance 
TJwThird^^ of "The Third Eeform Act" in 1884 and the agitation 
1884. ' which followed, regained something of the confidence 

of tlie Liberal element in the nation. By this act, 
which completed the work begun in 1832, the counties were 
given the same franchise as the boroughs, thus virtually making 
household suffrage the law of England. Boroughs with less than 
15,000 inhabitants were deprived of separate representation in 
parliament; boroughs with less than 50,000 were cut down to one 
representative ; each boroughs with a population between 50,000 and 
165,000, received two members each. The representation of Scot- 
land in the Commons was raised to 72, but Ireland was left as in 



1885] SALISBURY'S FIRST MII^ISTRY 1059 

1868.^ The act marks a great advance toward uniform electoral 

districts with uniform representation on the basis of population. 

The government, thus far, had carried out its reform program 

with triumphant success. Gladstone, however, by his continued 

hostility to Home Rule had roused the enmitv of the 
Defeat of 

Second Irish Nationals, and in the very session which adopted 

Gladstone ^^ ti t ^ •■, /• -r.-Ti i • -, i 

Ministry. the Redistribution Rill, they seized the opportunity, 

offered by some unimportant details of the budget, to 
transfer their voting strength to the opposition. The defeated 
measure was a proposal to put a new tax on beer and spirits, and 
was without political significance ; but the vote revealed the fact 
that the Nationals held the balance of power and were prepared to 
force the government either to compromise or to resign. Glad- 
stone chose the latter course. 

The Conservatives were thus returned to power; but their 
position was precarious. They were dependent upon the good-will 

of the Irish Nationals for their majority, and this 

Saiisburtj's snpport mnst necessarily be uncertain. Lord Salisbury, 
first ministry, . ^ n , tt 

1885. the new premier, was iniiy as much opposed to Home 

Rule as Gladstone; yet he had not been identified 
with the recent repressive measures of the Liberal ministry and 
was able to make conciliatory advances to his new allies by drop- 
ping the Crimes Act and by appropriating a largo sum under the 
"Ashbourne Act" to assist Irish peasants in buying their farms. 
The general election of November, however, made little change in 
the relation of parties. In Ireland the recently extended franchise 
told for Home Rule and increased the Nationals in parliament to 
eighty-six; but in England and Scotland, where the Liberals 

^ Parliament as thus constituted still remains. Of the Commons there 
are, in all, 670 members, assigned as follows : To England and Wales 495, to 
Scotland 72, and to Ireland 103. Of these members, further, 377 repre- 
sent counties, 284 represent boroughs, and 9 represent universities. The 
membership of the House of Lords is constantly varying. At present it 
consists of about 580 members. Of these, 26 are Lords Spiritual, 16 are 
Scottish representative peers elected for the present parliament, 28 are 
Irish representative peers elected for life; the remaining are peers of 
the United Kingdom. 



1060 THE SECOXD EEA OF KEFORM [victoria 

received the support of the newly-enfranchised laborers, the 

National gains were fully met by corresponding Liberal gains. 

In the meanwhile, the announcement had been made from 
various sources that Gladstone himself had embraced the cause 
oiad'itone '^^ Home Eule. The rumor was vigorously denied 
Ride^^Third ^^ ^^® Liberal press, and when parliament assembled 
FOyrvm-l- ^^ consider the queen's address, much doubt still 
Juiy,i8S6. existed as to Gladstone's position. The Nationals, 
however, were already suspicious of their new friends, and the 
announcement by Lord Salisbury that he proposed to suppress the 
National League, which had taken the place of the old Land 
League, was enough to send them all packing again to the Liberal 
benches. They soon found that their confidence this time was 
not misplaced. Gladstone returned to power and Home Rule was 
formally added to the platform of the Liberal party. 

It was certain that all the Liberal members would not follow 

their chief in the espousal of Home liule; but how serious the 

defection would be, and whether the accession of the 

of Liberal Irish vote would sufficiently recruit the depleted ranks 
party. , 

to enable them to hold their own, remained to be seen. 

Hartington and Goschen and sixteen other Liberals had already 
refused to assist in the overthrow of the Salisbury government. 
Others waited in the hope that Gladstone might yet be able 
to hold the party together and at the same time 'satisfy the 
demands of the Irish members. But when the expected Home 
Rule Bill at last appeared. Chamberlain, Bright, Trevelyan, 
and some ninety others also withdrew. They refused, however, 
to be merged in the ranks of the Conservatives, and standing by 
the old Whig policy of the legislative union of the two kingdoms, 
adopted the name of the "Liberal Unionists." 

The Bill proposed to give the Irish a local parliament, pro- 
hibited from endowing or disabling any religious body. It cut 
off the Irish from all representation in the imperial parliament, 
but required Ireland to pay her share toward the expenses of the 
imperial government. A "Land Purchase Bill" was added that 
proposed to advance from the imperial treasury £50,000,000 to 
be used by the Irish government to assist the tenants in buying 



1886, 1887] PlilST HOME RULE BILL 1061 

their farms under the Ashhourne Act. At the second reading 
the bill was thrown out largely by the vote of the Union Liberals, 

although many of the Irish Nationalists also voted 
Fir^Homl ^^^^ ^^® Opposition because of the proposed exclusion 
issi-*^^^"' ^^ ^^^ Irish from the imperial parliament. Gladstone 

then appealed to the country. The excitement was 
intense; rival candidates attacked each other with the utmost 
bitterness, and after one of the most heated campaigns of modern 
times the Conservatives and Liberal Unionists were sent back 
with a combined majority of 118 votes over the Irish and Liberal 
Home Rulers. 

Salisbury had now returned in triumph and Home Rule appar- 
ently was dead. Something, however, must be done for Ireland, 

where the peasantry were growing desperate under their 
secondmin- sufferings. The plan of fixing rent by judicial action 
new'irish^ had Only increased the burdens of the tenants, since the 
LaadAct, rates were fixed at a money valuation and the prices of 

farm products had steadily declined. Thus, where it 
took one pig to pay the rent in 1881, it took two pigs in 1886. 
Salisbury who had promised to the electors "a government that 
would not flinch," although he had dropped the Crimes Act when 
he needed the Irish votes, now proposed to make the Act perpet- 
ual, and carried the measure in spite of the opposition of Glad- 
stone and the Home Rulers. Hand in hand with this measure, 
however, the government passed a new Land Act, by which judicial 
rents that had been fixed before 1886, were to be revised; lease- 
holders, also, that is those who held land under contracts, who 
had been excluded from the benefit of the act of 1881, were 
included. The act was passed, although a similar act proposed 
by Parnell the year before had been defeated. In 1888, £10,000,000 
were added to the sum appropriated for the purchase of Irish 
farms under the Ashbourne Act, and the next year parliament 
formally took in hand some much needed public works in Ireland, 
such as the construction of a system of drainage and the intro- 
duction of railroads. 

In the meanwhile, Home Rule was seriously suffering in the 
public estimation as the/ result of a personal attack upon Par- 



1062 THE SECOND EEA OE KEFORM [victoria 

nell. A series of articles were published in the Times under the 
head Parnellism and Crime, in which an attempt was made to 

show by means of fac-simile letters, that Parnell had 
Pwnidi''^'^^ been connected with the Phoenix Park murders. The 

letters were proved afterward to be forgeries and 
Parnell secured damages to the amount of £5,000. But in 1890 
he became further involved in a divorce suit, which had the effect 
of completely destroying the confidence of the public and led to a 
defection in the ranks of his party in favor of Justin McCarthy. 
Parnell, however, refused to yield his position as leader, and the 
disruption of the party was probably saved only by his timely 
death in 1891. 

The government was by no means so engrossed with the Irish 
question that it did not find time for many other useful acts. 

In 1887 the empire celebrated the queen's Jubilee in 
Domcsttc the midst of great rejoicing. In 1888 Goschen, 
ministn^^^^ ^^^® ^®^ Chancellor of the Exchequer, carried out a 

plan by which the interest on the public debt was 
reduced from 3, to 2|- per cent. In 1889 the government author- 
ized the building of seventy new warships at an expense of 
£21,500,000. In 1890 and 1891, important educational measures 
were adopted, which proportioned grants to the needs of districts 
and made elementary education free in England and Wales. In 
1888 elective county governments were introduced patterned after 
the elective Corporation Councils of 1835,^ and in 1890 a sum of 
money was applied to such councils of counties as were willing to 
undertake the establishment of technical and intermediate schools. 
In the general election of 1892 Gladstone again came be- 
fore the country, but upon a somewhat broader platform than 

in 1886, known as the Newcastle Platform, and the 
ministration Liberals were returned to parliament with a majority of 
stone"'i892 foi"ty votes. Salisbury resigned and Gladstone resumed 

office for the fourth and last time. Gladstone at once 
presented his second Home Eule Bill which differed from the first 
largely in giving the Irish a representation in the imperial parlia- 
ment. At first he proposed to allow the Irish members to vote 

' See page 998. 



1893-1894] KETIREMENT OP GLADSTONE 1063 

upon imperial questions only; but the injustice of this restriction 
was so apparent that it was speedily abandoned, and the bill was 
so amended that the votes of the Irish members should be fully 
equal to those of other members of parliament. After three 
months of vigorous discussion the bill finally passed the House. 
The Lords, however, rejected it by a vote of 419 to 41. Before 
such a majority even Gladstone flinched, and although in the 
Newcastle Program he had pledged himself "to mend or end" the 
House of Lords, he refused to raise the gauntlet; only by a revo- 
lution could he have met such an overwhelming opposition. 

Home Rule, accordingly, was abandoned, and the ministry 

turned to meet other pledges which it had made to the people. 

Chief of them in importance was the creation of Parish 

* * PctvisTh 

Councils and District Councils, completing the system of local 

Bill " 1892. 7 i o .J 

self-government begun by the Act of 1835. By this 
act "Parish Councils" were established in all the larger parishes, 
and "Parish Meetings" in the smaller parishes; the parishes, also, 
were grouped into districts and, over each district was placed a 
"District Council." Thus a regular chain of local elective gov- 
erning bodies was instituted, rising from the parish councils 
through the district and the county councils to the imperial 
parliament ; a system which to an American may be illustrated 
by the somewhat similar chain of town, county, state, and nation.^ 
Gladstone was now approaching his eighty-fifth year. His 
service had been almost continuous since 1832, and if ever a serv- 
ant had earned the right to rest from his labors, he 
of Glad- had. He still carried his burden of years with rare 

stone, 1894. ^ ^. . -,11, 

grace and dignity; the marvelous intellect was 
undimmed; the lofty courage, which had never faltered in the 
paths of righteousness and justice, still faced the future, with 
the upward look, the clear-eyed faith of old; and yet in the course 
of nature the end could not be far off. Gladstone determined, 
therefore, to resign, and on March 3, 1894, took leave of his col- 
leagues and retired to the peace of his beautiful home at Hawarden 

* Of course wlien we pass the county the comparison will not bear 
pressing, for the relations of state and nation in America are very dif- 
f ei'ent from those of the English county and the imperial parliament. 



1064 THE SECOXD ERA OF EEFORM [victoria 

Castle. Here he died four years later, May 19, 1898; — the 

"Grand Old Man" to the last. 

Upon the retirement of Gladstone- his duties were turned over 

to his foreign secretary, Archibald Philip Primrose, better known 

as Lord Eosebery, who made few changes in the cabinet 
The Rose- ^ ,, • , „ • -, ,n /-,n i ^ 

hery minis- and thus virtuaiiy continued the Gladstone ministry. 

try, March i • i xi • j 

1894-June The program which the new premier announced was 
formidable but practical, following lines already laid 
down by his chief, even to the continued shelving of Home Eule. 
It soon became evident, however, that with the retirement of 
Gladstone the spirit had departed which had so long held the 
Liberal party together. Other views, also, were beginning to be 
heard outside the walls of the Parliament House; the ghost of the 
old Chartist movement was abroad again; Socialism was daily 
gaining its adherents; new claims were pressing for a hearing, as 
strange to the Liberals of the sixties and the eighties, as parlia- 
mentary reform had been to the followers of Peel and Wellington. 
Hardly ten days after the retirement of Gladstone, Henry Labou- 
chere formally presented to the Commons a resolution that pro- 
posed, in plain words, to abolish the legislative functions of the 
House of Lords. The resolution was carried by two votes. The 
attendance was small, the resolution was unexpected, and the vote 
could not be taken in any sense as an expression of the opinion of 
the Lower House ; yet the fact that such a resolution could pre- 
vail in any assembly of the House, carried with it an ominous 
threat for the future, and served to quicken fears which had 
been allayed somewhat by Gladstone's moderation. The Irish 
National party, moreover, had been shattered by the fall of Par- 
nell, and their divided forces could no longer be counted as an 
element of Liberal strength. The strength of the ministry, there- 
fore, was rapidly waning; and in June 1895, an adverse vote upon 
a question of comparative unimportance forced Eosebery to resign. 
Upon the resignation of Eosebery, Salisbury was for the third 
time invited to form a ministry. He had little reason to expect 
support from a parliament whose liberal majority had forced him 
to resign three years before, and at once appealed to the nation. 
The results fully revealed the strength of the Conservative reac- 



1895-1901] THE THIRD SALISBURY MINISTRY 1065 

tion. In the new House, out of 588 members, the Conservative 

ministry commanded 411 votes. The campaign, however, had 

been fought out chiefly on the issne of Home Kule, and 

The Con- inasmuch as the Liberal Unionists had returned sev- 

servatwe re- 

'isfs^^'^^ enty-one members, in making up his Cabinet Lord Sahs- 
bury saw fit to strengthen his position still further by 
recognizing this element in the appointment of Joseph Chamberlain 
as Colonial Secretary, Goschen as First Lord of the Admiralty 
and Spencer Compton Cavendish, the duke of Devonshire,^ as 
President of the Council. Lord Salisbury himself assumed the 
duties of foreign secretary, and James Arthur Balfour, his nephew, 
became First Lord of the Treasury and leader of the Com- 
mons. 

The third Salisbury ministry is thus strictly a coalition minis- 
try ; and, as with most of the coalition ministries of the past, it 
has not only proved unusually strong, but has also 

tendency of advanced to the very ground now held by the party 
Salisbuni's . ^ l j 

third min- which it has nominally supplanted. Its Liberal tend- 

encies have been singularly illustrated by its- attitude 
toward Irish Home Rule. While its opposition to the establish- 
ment of a separate Irish parliament has remained as uncompromis- 
ing as ever, it has fully acknowledged the iustice of 

The "Local o ' j & j 

Oovernment Irish discontent, and by the "Local Government Act" 

for Ireland 

Act," Au- 01 1898, has extended to Ireland the svstem oi govern- 

Qlist 189S* ^ o 

ment by means of local councils, recently established in 
Great Britain, thus really adopting the principles of the Union 
Liberals rather than the Conservatives, and granting to Ireland a 
position within the empire which approximates nearly to that 
of Scotland and Wales. 

The attitude of the Salisbury ministry towards the colonies, 
also, is far different from the position of the earlier Conservatives; 
Australian ^^ ^^ more liberal even than that of the Gladstone min- 
jamim, ^s^^T of 1867. Thus the six Australian states have 
^^c^- been allowed an absolutely free hand in forming the 

federal constitution that went into effect on the first day of the 
new century, although the new constitution is not only more 

^ Before 1891, Marquis of Hartington. 



1066 THE SECOlSrD ERA OF REFORM [victobia 

democratic than the Canada Federation Act, but in some impor- 
tant features it is more democratic even than the Constitution of 
the United States. 

The foreign administration of Lord Salisbury, in its patience 
and moderation, has also resembled the conduct of that office by 
the Liberals rather than the Conservatives, and for the 
policy of same reason has been severely criticised. Even Con- 
servatives have not failed to rail at their chief, for 
v/hat they have been pleased to call a vacillating, truckling policy. 
They have remembered the glorious days of the Berlin Congress, 
and have not failed to contrast the forbearance of Salisbury with 
the somewhat ostentatious bluster of the old-time chief of the 
Jingoes. Yet in spite of the criticism, as far as the issue has yet 
been revealed, as in the Venezuela affair, the wisdom of Lord 
Salisbury's position has certainly been vindicated. In general, 
while paying little heed to the bogies which in the days of Palm- 
ers ton or Beaconsfield used to send English politicians into such 
paroxysms of alarm, and persistently refusing to go to war simply 
to avert some hypothetical danger to the empire in the future, he 
has yet steadily insisted upon the integrity of the empire, the- 
respect of existing treaties by foreign nations, and the duty of 
the government to protect its subjects, and has been content to 
advance the interests of the empire upon the more substantial 
basis of commercial treaties and international friendships. 

It is too early to write the history of the present Boer war, or 

to attempt to pass Judgment upon its causes or to tabulate its 

results. It is interesting, however, to note that in the 

<^ , one case where Lord Salisbury has allowed himself to 
Boer war. j^q forced from his policy of moderation and forbear- 
ance, he has been more severely criticised than for all 
the other measures of his administration put together. But 
whatever the rest of the world may think, or whatever may be the 
ultimate verdict of history, the people of Great Britain have cer- 
tainly given their judgment in the recent elections of 1900, and 
the Salisbury ministry crosses the threshold of the new century, 
apparently stronger than ever in the confidence of the nation. 
From present indications he is destined to remain in power as long 



1901] DEATH OP QUEEN VICTOEIA 1067 

as his advancing years will permit him to perform the duties of his 
high office. 

On the 22d of January 1901, the long reign of Queen Victoria 

came to an end. She had entered the sixty-fourth year of her 

reign and was completing the eighty-second year of her 

^^'iHl'^/r- age> In the length of her rei^n, few monarchs have 

Queen Vic- ® f o > 

uanizz^woi surpassed her; in the solid achievement of her reign, no 
monarch can rival her. It is true that the greatness 
of England daring this long period has heen due to ten thousand 
forces, working many of them in unseen and even humble chan- 
nels, and that with much of this achievement, directly and person- 
ally, Victoria has had little to do. This fact, however, is not by 
any means to be ascribed to the personal nonentity of the sover- 
eign, but to the complexity of modern national life and to the very 
multiplicity of the sources from which it springs. But if a list of 
these sources were to be drawn out, of the elements that have 
moulded and directed British character, that have contributed 
most to British greatness during the past sixty years, there must 
be mentioned among the first the goodness, the personal nobility, 
the sweet womanhood of her who has so long borne the title of 
Queen, who has imparted a new dignity to monarchy, and made 
the sovereign once more an object of patriotic affection. 

With the new king, Edward VII. , who enters into the posses- 
sion of this priceless inheritance of affection and loyalty, to all 
appearances there begins a new era in the development 
begins with of British history. Since Gladstone's retirement, the 

Edward VII. . / , ,. . . 

party in power has shown no disposition to undo his 
work. But just as the Conservatives of 1841 accepted the work 
of the first era of reform as a finality, and joining with the Con- 
servative Whigs advanced to Whig ground under the leadership of 
Peel, so the Conservatives of to-day, uniting with the less radical 
wing of the Liberals, have accepted the reforms of the Gladstone 
period, and under the leadership of Salisbury and Chamberlain 
have boldly faced the future. 

The goal, moreover, is not so remote that it may not be 
already discerned; — the release of the dependent populations of 
the British Empire from their political nonage and the union of 



1068 THE SECOND ERA OF REFORM [edwaedVU. 

all in a vast system of self-governing federations, all the members 

of which shall have equal political rights and equal standing before 

the laws. This is democracy pure and simple; the very 

Democracy . 

and the new democracy which Lord John Eussell so vehemently 

iTft'UCrir'XQjt'tS'lflfh 

disclaimed in 1832 and which Beaconsfield decried in 
1867. And yet to-day only the blindest of Conservative prejudice 
can look upon the approach of Great Britain to a government 
by the people with other than confidence. For if democracy is 
making rapid strides, public education is likewise advancing, 
redeeming the people of Great Britain from the curse of illiteracy 
and preparing them for the trust of self-government. 

In the colonies the advance of the democracy was long feared 
as the presage of the ultimate dissolution of the empire. But 
the people of the widely-extended dependencies have proved them- 
selves quite as capable of a vigorous, healthy loyalty to the empire, 
quite as susceptible to pride in the British name as the old-fash- 
ioned land-oligarchy that once ruled within the narrow seas. If 
democracy has advanced, the principle of federation has also 
advanced. The empire is "no longer the empire of England, or 
the empire of Great Britain, but tlie empire of all the British 
possessions," an empire resting not upon force but upon loyalty 
and mutual interest, an empire in which is to be recognized in the 
future as the fundamental law of its constitution, — absolute equal- 
ity of rights among all its members. 



PROMINENT BRITISH STATESMEN OF MODERN TIMES WHO HAVE 
ENTERED THE PEERAGE. 

When date of assuming title is important it is given in parentheses. Courtesy titles 
are given in quotation marks. 

Aberdeen, E. of* George Hamilton Gordon d. 1860. 

Albemarle, D. of, (1660) George Monk d. 1670. 

Althorp, see Silencer 

Ashley, see Shaftesbury 

Beaconslield, E. of, (1876) Benjamin Disraeli -. d. 1881. 

Bolingbroke, V., (1714) Henry St. John d. 1751. 

Bute, E. of John Stuart d. 1792 

Carmarthen, see Leeds 

Castlereagh, see Londonderry 

Chatham, E. of William Pitt d. 1778. 

Chesterfield, E. of Philip Dormer Stanhope d. 1773. 

Clarendon, E. of, (1660) Edward Hyde c?. 1674. 

Clyde, B. , (1858) Colin Campbell d. 1863. 

Dalhousie, E. of, (1860) Fox Maule Ramsay (1882), Baron Panmure d. 1874. 

Danby, see Leeds 

Derby, E. of, (1851) Edward Geoffrey Smith Stanley, Baron Stanley.cZ. 1869. 

Devonshire, D. of, (1891) Spencer Compton Cavendish, "Marquis of Hart- 

ington" 

Glenelg, B., (1835) Charles Grant d. 1866. 

Goderich, see Ripon 

Grey, E Charles Grey, Viscount Howick d. 1845. 

Granville, E., (1744) John Carteret, Baron Carteret d. 1763. 

Guilford, E. of, (1690) Frederick North, "Lord North" d. 1792. 

Hartington. see Devonshire 

Halifax, M. of George Savile d. 1695. 

Halifax, E. of Charles Montague, Baron Halifax, (1700) d. 1730. 

Howick, see (xrey 

Lansdowne, M. of, (1784) William Petty, Earl of Shelburne, (1761) d. 1805. 

Lansdowne, M. of Henry Petty -PitzMam-ice d. 1863. 

Latimer, see Leeds 

Londonderry, M. of, (1821) Robert Stewart, "Viscount Castlereagh" d. 1833. 

Leeds, D. of Thomas Osborne, Lord Latimer, Earl of Danby, 

Marquis of Carmarthen d. 1696. 

Mahon, see Stanhope 

Marlborough, D. of, (1702) John Churchill, Earl of Marlborough, (1689) . ..d. 1733. 

Melbourne, V William Lamb d. 1848. 

Melville, v., (1802) Henry Dundas d. 1811. 

Newcastle, D. of Thomas Pelham d. 1768. 

North, see Guilford 

Nottingham, see Winchelsea 

Oxford, E. of, (1711) Robert Harley d. 1724. 

Palmerston, V Henry John Temple d. 1865. 

Panmure, see Dalhousie 

Portland, D. of William Henry Cavendish Bentiuck d. 1809. 

Ripon, E. of, (1833) Frederick John Robinson, Viscount Goderich, 

(1827) d. 1859. 

Rockingham, M. of Charles Watson Wentworth d. 1782. 

Rosebery, E. of. Archibald Philip Primrose 

Russell, E., (1861) John Russell, "Lord John Russell" d. 1878. 

Salisbury, M. of, (1868) Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne Cecil, "Lord 

Robert Cecil, " "Viscount Cranbourne" (1865). 

Sandwich, E. of John Montague d. 1793. 

Shaftesbury, E. of, (1672) Anthony Ashley Cooper, Baron Ashley d. 1683. 

Shelbm-ne, E. of, see Lansdowne 

Shrewsbury, D. of, (1694).. Charles Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury d 1718. 

Sidmouth. V., (1805) Henry Addington d. 1844. 

Spencer, E., (1834) John Charles Spencer, "Viscount Althorp" d. 1845. 

Stanhope, E Philip Henry Stanhope, "Lord Mahon" d. 1875. 

Sunderland, E. of, (1643) Robert Spencer d. 1703. 

WeUington, D. of, (1814) Arthur Wellesley, Viscount Wellington, (1809,) 

Earl and Marquis of Wellington, (1813) . . ..d. 1853. 
Winchelsea, E. of Daniel Finch, Earl of Nottingham d. 1730. 

*D. = Duke. M. = Marquis. E. — Earl. V. = Viscount. B- = Baron, 



INDEX 



Aachen, Treaty of, 895. 

Aberdeen, see Gordon. 

Abyssinian war, 1043. 

Addington, Henry, Viscount Sid- 
mouth, prime minister, 958; 
secures peace with France, 959 ; 
member of ministry of All the 
Talents, 963 ; of Liverpool min- 
istry, 970; the Six Acts, 979; 
resigns, 980. 

Addison, Joseph, 860. 

Afghanistan, war in, 1013, 1026. 

Agincourt, battle of, 446. 

Agrarian revolution, in George 
III. 's reign, 916. 

Agricola in Britain, 10-12. 

Aidan, 23, 41. 

Aids, feudal, defined, 177. 

Aix-la-Chapelle, Treaty of, 895. 

Alabama claims, 1035, 1048. 

Albert, Prince Consort, 1006, 1007, 
1030. 

Alcuin, 64. 

Alexander I., czar of Russia, rela- 
tions with Napoleon, 963-966, 
968, 971, 973. 
II., czar, closes ■war with Eng- 
land, 1034, 1025; war with Tur- 
key, 1049-1051. 
III., king of Scotland, 324. 

Alexandria, bombardment of, 1057. 

Alfheah, archbishop of Canter- 
bury, 113, 119. 

Alfred, king of England, wars with 
Danes, 63, 65-68; government 
of, 68, 74-76; death and char- 
acter, 76, 77. 

Alien Bill, 847. 

Alma, siege and battle of the, 1028. 

Alney, Truce of, 117. 

A-lthorp, Viscount, see Spencer. 

America, early English settlements 
in, 809, 896 ; v/ars with French 
in, 897, 898; condition of colo- 
nies, 923, 935, 936, 933, 934; the 
Revolution, 935-940; civil war 



in, attitude of English people 
toward, 1033, 1034. 

American Duties' Bill, 926; re- 
pealed, 933. 

Amicable Loan, the, of Henry 
VIIL, 533. 

Amiens, Mise of, 888. 
Peace of, 958. 

Amity and Commerce, treaty of, 
970. 

Angles, settlements of, in Britain, 
"'19, 31, 33. 

Anglicana Ecclesia, 541. 

Annates, defined, 273; seized by 
Henry VIIL, 539; restored to 
church by Anne (Queen Anne's 
Bounty), 843. 

Anne, Queen, accession of, 836; 
political sympathies of, 837, 
853; relations to church, 843; 
death, 856; England under, 
856-860. 
Boleyn, see Boleyn. 
of Bohemia, wife of Richard II., 
413; relation to Lollards, 413, 
420. 
of Cleves, wife of Henry VIIL, 

551, 553. 
Neville, see Neville. 

Annual Indemnity Act, 880. 

Anselm, archbishop of Canter- 
bury, 187, 193, 193. 

Antoninus, wall of, 11. 

Appellant, Lords, ri,sing of, 418; 
fall of, 421. _ 

Aquitaine, acquired by Henry II., 
208; wars of English in, 209, 
314, 236, 240, 362; reorganized 
by Edward III., 383; adminis- 
tration of Black Prince in, 383- 
386; recovered by France, 464. 

Arabi Pasha, 1057. 

Architecture, Cistercian, 201 ; 
changing styles of, 370, 496. 

Argyle, Archibald, earl of, 694, 
703, 754. 



1070 



INDEX 



1071 



Argyle, Archibald, marquis of, re- 
bellion of, 783, 784. _ 
Arkwright, Richard, inventor of 

spinning by rollers, 912. 
Armada, the Spanish, 609-612. 
Armagnacs, origin of name of 

party, 437, 447. 
Arminians, the, party in English 

church, 650. 
Arms Act, the, 1016, 1017. 
Army, Council of the, 699. 
Declaration of the, 699. 
Enlistment Act, 1047. 
Plot, 671. 

English, regular, beginning of, 
748. 
Arras, Congress of, 456. 
Arteveldt, James van, "the Brewer 
of Ghent," 358, 359. 
Philip Van, successor of former 
slam at Rosbecque, 413. 
Arthur of Brittany, 245, 247. 

Prince of Wales, son of Henry 
VII., marries Catharine of 
Aragon, 510. 
Articles, the Forty-two, 570. 
the Six, 549, 550; repealed, 576. 
the Ten, 548. 
the Thirty-nine, 596, 814. 
Arundel, see Fitz-Alan. 

Thomas, archbisho]), 437, 440. 
Ashbourne Act, the, 1059, 1061. 
Ashburton, 940, 941. 
Ashdown, battle of, 63. 
Ashingdon, battle of, 116. 
Assembly, the General, of Scot- 
land, 663. 
Asser, biographer of Alfred, 73. 
Assiento, the, 855, 872, 883. 
Assize of Arms, the, 226. 
of Clarendon, 220. 
of Northampton, 226. 
Athelney, 66. 
Athelstan, 83, 85. 
Auckland, Lord, in India, 1013. 
Augsburg, League of 794, 795, 829, 
830, 834. 
Peace of, 617. 
Augustine, St., in Britain, 35; con- 
ference at Augustine's oak, 40. 
Aumale, William of, 270, 271. 
Austerlitz, battle of, 962. 
Australia, South, settlements in, 

1012. 1018, 1019. 
Australian Federation, 1065. 



Austria, see under wars of Spanish 
succession; wars of Austrian 
succession; Seven years' war; 
French Revolution; and Napo- 
leon. 

Austrian succession, the war of the, 



Babington Plot, 607. 

Bacon, Francis, Sir,615: impeached, 
639. 

Bacon, Roger, 320. 

Bailiff, the, in the manor, 181. 

Balaclava, battle of, 1024. 

Balfour, James Arthur, 1065. 

Ball, John, popular agitator, 405. 

Baliiol, Edward, king of Scotland, 
354; expulsion of from Scot- 
land, 355. 
John, claimant to Scottish 
throne, 324; does homage to 
Edward I., 325; breaks with 
Edward I, 327; death, 327, 
note. 

Ballot Act, 1047. 

Bank of England, founded, 823. 

Bannockburn, battle of, 338, 339. 

Barbadoes, colonized, 809. 

Barebone's Parliament, see Nomi- 
nated Parliament. 

Barnet, battle of, 483. 

Barons' war, 288-291. 

Basing, battle of, 63. 

Batavian Republic, 952. 

Bauge, battle of, 449. 

Beachy Head, battle of, 820. 

Beaconsfield, see Disraeli. 

Beauchamp, Richard, earl of War- 
wick, 457. 
Thomas, earl of Warwick, 418; 
421, 422. 

Beaufort, Edmund, duke of Somer- 
set, minister of Henry VI., 459; 
reverses of in France, 460 ; sup- 
ports king against Yorkists, 
463, 466 ; death, 467. 
Henry, duke of Somerset, 477. 
Henry, bishop of Winchester, 
451, 456; cardinal, 455; favors 
peace, 457 ; death of, 458, 459. 
Lady Jane, marries James I. of 
Scotland, 436. 

Beaumont and Fletcher, 617. 

Becket, Thomas, early life, 214; 
archbishop, 215, 216; at Coun- 



1073 



INDEX 



oil of Woodstock, 216; quarrel 
with Henry II., 217-222; death, 
323. 

Bede, at Wearmouth, 52; "Ecclesi- 
astical History" of, 52. 

Bedford, John, duke of, regent of 
France and protector of Eng- 
land, 450 ; French campaigns of, 
451, 456; death of, 457. 
-Grenville ministry, 921. 

Belesme, Robert of, 190, 191. 

Belfast College, 1011. 

Benedict Biscop, 43, 49, 52, 64. 

Benevolences of Edward IV., 487; 
abolished by Richard III., 491; 
Henry VIII., 522; Charles I., 
645. 

Bentinck, William, duke of Port- 
land, prime minister, 966; re- 
tires, 970. 
William, Lord, in India, 1013. 

Beowulf, 73. 

Berlin, Congress of, 1051. 
Decrees, the, 905. 

Bermuda, colonized, 809. , 

Bernicia, see of, divided, 47. 

Bertha, wife of Ethelbert of Kent, 
34. 

Berwick, won by English, 355 and 
note. 

Bible, the Great, 549. 
Translations: Alfred, 73; Wycliff, 
412; Tyndale, 537; Coverdale, 
549 ; authorized version, 632. 

Bigod, Roger, earl of Norfolk, 312. 

Bill, the Great, 580. 

Bishops' War, the first, 665. 
the second, 667. 

Bismarck, 1035. 

Black Death, 371, 373, 375. 

Black Friars, see Franciscans. 

Black Prince, Edward the, at Crecy, 
367; campaigns of, 376-378; 
interferes in Spain, 384 ; last war 
in France, 385-386 ; death, 394. 

Blake, Admiral, 716, 719, 735, 747. 

Blenheim, battle of, 841. 

Bloody Assizes, the, 785. 

Blount, Charles, Lord Mountjoy, 
in Ireland, 632. 

Bliicher at Ligny, 973: Waterloo, 
974. 

Boadicea, 9, 10. 

Boer War, the first, 1055, 1056. 
the second, 1066. 



Boethius, "Consolations of Philos- 
ophy," 73. 

Bohun, Humfrey de, earl of Here- 
ford, 312. 

Boliugbroke, see St. John, and 
Henry IV. of England. 

Bolevn, Anne, 524, 527, 539, 540; 
541, 550. 

Bonaparte, Napoleon, in Italy, 954; 
in Egypt, 956; First Consul, 
957 ; Peace of Amiens, 959 ; be- 
comes emperor of the French, 
960; proposed invasion of Eng- 
land, 961; Austerlitz, 962; su- 
preme in Europe, 963 ; the Con- 
tinental system, 964 - 966 ; 
Peninsular War, 967; over- 
throw of Austria, 968; Russian 
campaign, 971, 972; Elba, 972; 
Waterloo, 973; St. .Helena, 974. 

Boniface VIII., pope, quarrel with 
■ Edward I., 310; claims Scot- 
tish overlordship, 330. 

Bonner, bishop, 564, 575, 584. 

Book-land, 30, 152, note. 

Boston Massacre, 933. 
Tea Party, 934. 

Bosworth, battle of, 492. 

Botany Bay, convict colony estab- 
hshed, 949. 

Bothwell Brigg, battle of, 775. 

Bothwell, earl of, murders Darnley, 
598; marries Mary Queen of 
Scots, 598; death, 599. 

Boulogne, Treaty of, 556. 

Bourbon Family Compacts, 883, 890, 
909. 

Bouvines, battle of, 258. 

Boycott, origin of name, 1054. 

Boyne, battle of the, 816. 

Braddock's campaign, 898. 

Bramham Moor, battle of, 435. 

Breaute, Faulkes, de, 263, 270, 271. 

Breda, Declaration of, 744. 
Peace of, 756. 

Bretigny, Treaty of, 380, 382. 

Bretvv'alda, 55, note. 

Bridgewater, Francis, duke of, 
builder of Manchester-Liver- 
pool canal, 914, 915. 

Brigham, Treatv of, 324. 

Bright, John, 1003, 1052. 

Britain, early, population of, 2-7; 
under Romans, 7-17; Roman- 
izing of, 8 ; Roman policy in, 9 ; 



INDEX 



1073 



revolt of Boadicea, 9, 10; or- 
ganization of, by Romans, 14, 
15; decline of Roman power in, 
16, 17. 

British American Colonies Con- 
_ federation Act, 1042, 1043. 

British Museum, beginning of, 895. 

Brougham, Henry, Lord, 991. 

Bruce, Robert, the elder, claimant 
to Scottish throne, 324. 
Robert, the younger, see Robert 
I., king of Scotland. 

Brunanburh, battle of, 84. 

Buckingham, see Stafford and Vil- 
liers. 

Bull, John, origin of name, 832 and 
note. 

Bunker Hill, battle of, 936. 

Bunyan, John, his "Pilgrim's Prog- 
ress," 751. 

Burgh, Hvibert de, justiciar of 
Henry IH. , 270; suppresses 
bai-ons, 271; recrowns Henry 
III., 271; his fall, 272-274. 

Burghley, see Cecil. 

Burgundy, Charles, duke of, ally 
of Edward IV., 485. 
Philip, duke of, ally of Henry 

V. , and Bedford, 448. 
John, duke of, ally of Henry V., 
444, 445 ; murdered at bridge of 
Montereau, 448. 

Burke, Edmund, interest in India, 
932; sympathy with Ameri- 
cans, 935; Whig leader, 940, 
941, 943, 944, 945, 950; takes 
part in attack on Warren Hast- 
ings, 947. 

Burials Act, 1053. 

Bute, John Stuart, earl of, minister 
of Ceorge III., 908, 921. 

Butler, James, duke of Ormond, 
lord - lieutenant of Ireland, 
710; the act of settlement, 
753. 
Bishop of Bristol, "the Analogy," 
866. 

Buttington, battle of, 75. 

Bye Plot, the, 625. 

Byng, George, Admiral, wins bat- 
tle of Cape Pesaro, 871. 
John, Admiral, fails at Minorca, 
900; shot, 904. 

Byron, Lord George, joins Greek 
insurgents, 984. 



Cabal, the, 760. 

Cabinet government, beginning of, 
443, 761, 825, 879. 

Cade Rebellion, 461, 462. 

Cadiz, Drake's expedition to, 609. 

Cadwalla, 50. 

Cadwallon, 39, 40. 

Caedmon, 47. 

Caesar in Britain, 7. 

Calais, siege of, by Edward III., 
368; importance of possession, 
369 ; loss of, 585. 

Calcutta, beginning of English pos- 
session of, 808 ; Black Hole of, 
900, 901. 

Calder, Admiral Robert, meets Vil- 
leneuve off Finisterre, 961. 

Calendar Bill, Chesterfield's, 895. 

Calverts, the, found colony in 
Maryland, 662. 

Cambridge, Richard, earl of, con- 
spiracy of, against Henry V., 
445. 

Cambuskenneth, battle of, 328. 

Cameron, Richard, leader of Scots 
in revolt against Charles II., 
774, 775. 

Campbell, Sir Colin, Lord Clyde, 
raises siege of Lucknow, 1030. 

Campeggio, cardinal, papal legate, 
525. 

Camperdown, battle of, 954. 

Campion, Edmund, Jesuit mission- 
ary to England, 604; death, 
605. 

Campo Formio, treaty of, 954. 

Canada, struggle of English and 
French for, 897, 898, 907 ; early 
discontent of people of, 946, 
999; insurrection in, 1000; the 
Caroline affair, 1000; Pitt's Bill, 
999; union of, 1000, 1042, 1043; 
Fenian invasion of, 1044. 

Canning, George, foreign secre- 
tary, 966, 967; resigns, 980; re- 
called, becomes leader of Com- 
mons, 981 ; opposes Holy Alli- 
ance, 981-986; favors Catholic 
emancipation, 986 ; interferes 
in Greece, 984 ; prime minister 
and death, 987. 

Canterbury, early Jutish settle- 
ment of, 47; establishment of 
Christian mission at, 34; be- 
comes seat of archbishop, 35. 



1074 



INDEX 



"Canterbury Tales," 401, 402. 

Canute, struggle with Edmund 
Ironsides, 114, 115; succeeds to 
English throne, 117; policy of, 
117; charter of, 118, 119; in 
Italy, 119; death and results of 
reign, 120, 121 ; laws of, 122. 

Cape Colony, seized by British, 952; 
permanent annexation of, 974. 

Carausius, 15, 16. 

Cardinal College, later Christ 
Church College, founded by 
Wolsey, 523. ■ 

Caroline of Anspach, queen of 
George II., influence of, 877. 
of Brunswick, wife of George 
. IV., 979; death, 980. 

Carr, Robert, viscount of Roches- 
ter, earl of Somerset, favorite 
of James I. , 634. 

Carta Mercatoiia, 304. 

Carteret, John, Earl Granville, 
ministry of, 887; involves Eng- 
land in war of Austrian suc- 
cession, 889; his Austro-Sar-. 
dinian treaty-, 890; resigns, 891. 

Cartwright, Edmund, inventor of 
power loom, 913. 

Carucage, levied, 236, 240. 

Cassivellanus, 7. 

Castlereagh, see. Stewart. 

Cateau Cambresis, 592. 

Catesby, Robert, leader in Gun- 
powder Plot, 627. 

Catharine of Aragon, marries 
Arthur Prince of Wales, 510; 
Henry VIII. , 514; divorced, 
524, 525, 539; death, 551. 
of France, queen of Henry V., 448. 
of Portugal, queen of Charles II. , 
755. 

Catholic Emancipation, Indul- 
gences of Charles II. , 758, 764 ; 
the Hales Case, 788; Indul- 
gences of James II., 790, 792; 
opposed by Gordon rioters, 931 ; 
favored by Pitt for Ireland, 958 ; 
military disability removed 
from Catholics, 978; opposed 
by Wellington, 987 ; the Act of, 
989. 

Cavendish, Frederick, Lord, 1054. 
Spencer Compton, duke of 
Devonshire, marquis of Hart- 
ington, 1060. 



Cawnpore, massacre at, 1029, 1030. 

Caxton, William, English printer, 
499. 

Ceawlin, conquests of, 22, 23, 25, 
33. 

Cecil, Robert, earl of Salisbury, 
minister of Elizabeth, ,615; of 
James I., 624; defeats Cobham 
Plot, 625; financial policy of, 
631 ; foreign policy of, 635 ; 
l^art in marriage of Princess 
Elizabeth, 635. 
Robert Arthur, viscount Cran- 
bourne, marquis of Salisbury, 
refuses to support Disraeli's 
reform bill, 1042 ; foreign secre- 
tary, 1050; first ministry of, 
1059; second ministry of, 1061, 
1062; third ministry" of, 1064, 
1067; foreign policy of, 1066. 
William, Lord Burghley, secre- 
tary of state under Elizabeth, 
589; defeats the Ridolfi Plot, 
601 ; death, 615. 

Celts, in Europe, 3; migrations to 
Britain, 4; customs of, 4-6. 

Ceorl, defined, 28. 

Cessation of Arms, the, 688, 689. 

Chad, 45. 

Clialmers, Thomas, Free Church 
movement in Scotland, 1014. 

Chalons, Little battle of, 322. 

Chamberlain, Joseph, president of 
Board of Trade, 1052, 1053; 
colonial secretary, 1065. 

Chapter of Myton, 340. 

Charles Edward, "the Young Pre- 
tender, ' ' invades Scotland, 892 ; 
failure of and death, 894. 
v., emperor, king of Spain, 517; 
elected emperor, 519; ally of 
Henry VIII., 520, 521; wars in 
Italy, 521 ; abdication of, 579. 
VI., emperor (archduke Charles), 
claimant to Spanish crown, 
831, 832, 843, 849; elected em- 
peror, 854; death, 888. 
VII., emperor (elector of Bava- 
ria), claimant to Austrian suc- 
cession, 888; elected emperor, 
889. 
of Burgundy, see Burgundy. 
I. of England, journey to Madrid, 
641 ; accession, 642 ; character 
and policy, 642, 643 ; first quar- 



INDEX 



1075 



rel with parliament, 643-646; 
troubles with his third parlia- 
ment, 647-652 ; first era of Stnart 
despotism, 653 - 666 ; troubles 
with Scotland, 663-668; in Scot- 
land, 675 ; plots with Irish lords, 
676 ; attempts to impeach five 
members, 678-680; civil war, 
681-696; a prisoner, 696, 697; 
intrigues with Scots, 701 ; 
second civil war, 702,703; trial 
and execution of, 704, 705. 
Charles II. of England, in Scotland, 
712; invades England, 715, 716; 
issues Declaration of Breda, 
744; restoration of, 745; char- 
acter and policy, 745, 746 ; mar- 
ries Catharine of Portugal, 755 ; 
renews commercial attack 
upon Holland, 756; personal 
rule of, 760; Treaty of Dover, 
762; allies with Louis XIV. 
against Holland, 762-765; strug- 
gle against Exclusion Bill, 771, 
772 ; second era of Stuart tyr- 
anny, 778-781; attacks the 
charters, 780; death, 781; abil- 
ity of, 781. 

V. of France, first Dauphin, 379 ; 
wars with Edward III., 378, 
380, 383, 385, 386, 388. 

VI. of France, condition of 
France under, 448; death of, 
451. 

VII. of France, murder of John 
of Burgund3^ 451 ; assisted by 
Joan of Arc, 454, 455 ; crowned 
at Rheims, 455. 

VIII. of France, his wai's in Italy, 
509; wars with Henry VII., 
504. 

IX. of France, religious wars of, 
596, 600. 

X. of France, deposed, 990. 

II. of Spain, relations to war of 
Devolution, 761, 762; to parti- 
tion treaties, 830, 831 ; declares 
Philip of Anjou his heir, 832; 
death, 833. 

III. of Spain, war with England, 
909, 910. 

IV. of Spain, deposed by Napo- 
leon, 967. 

XII. of Sweden, death of, 871. 
Charter, the Great, 260-263; strug- 



gle for, 266-293; confirmed by 
Edward I. , 314. 
of the Forests, the, 269. 

Chartist agitation, 1002, 1003, 1010, 
1018. . 

Chatham, see Pitt. 

Chaucer, Geoffrey, 399, 400; the 
"Canterbury Tales," 401, 402. 

Chester, battle of, 23, 24. 

Chevy Chase, see Otterburn. 

Chichester, Sir Arthur, in Ireland, 
632, 633. 

China, first war with, 1005; second 
war with, 1026, 1031, 1032. 

Chippenham, battle of, 66. 

Chivalry, 321-323. 

Christian Brothers, the, 537, 538. 

Christianity, planting of in early 
Britain, 13, 14; reintroduction 
in Teutonic Britain, 34, 35, 42. 

Chronicle, Anglo-Saxon, 73, 181. 

Churchill, John, duke of Marlbor- 
ough, in service of James II., 
784; deserts James II., 799; in 
Ireland, 817, 820; influence 
under Anne, 837-839 ; character 
of, 838; military career of, 
839-841, 844, 845, 851; breaks 
with Tories, 842, 843; disgraced, 
853 ; end of career, 867. 
Sarah, Lady Marlborough, influ- 
ence over Anne, 837; dismissed, 
853. 

Cistercians, in England, 200, 201. 

City, the, 79, 89, isi, 198, 242-244; 
growth of, 172 ; see also London. 

Civil list, adopted, 821. 

Civil war, the first, 681-695; the 
second, 702. 

Clare, Richard de, "Strong-bow," 
earl of Strigul and Pembroke, 
invades Ireland, 224. 
Richard of, earl of Gloucester, 
friend of Simon de Montfort, 
284 ; opposes Simon, 285, 287. 
Gilbert of, earl of Gloiicester. ally 
of de Montfort, 287; joins his 
enemies, 291 ; defeats Simon at 
Evesham, 291-293, forces Henry 
III. to accept terms of the bar- 
ons, 295. 
Gilbert of, earl of Gloucester, 
335 ; one of the Lords Ordain- 
ers, 336 ; slain at Bannockburn, 
339. 



1076 



INDEX 



Clarence, George, duke of, 476, 479, 
480; deserts Warwick, 483; 
death, 486. 

Clarendon, assize of, 280. 
Code, 750. 

Constitution of, 218. 
Edward Hyde, earl of, see Hyde. 

Claverliouse, John Graham of, 
Viscount Dundee, see Gra- 
ham. 

Claudius, emperor, in Britain, 7, 8. 

Clement VI., pope, see Schism, the 
Great. 
VII., pope, 521; action in divorce 
case of Henry VIII., 524, 52.5. 

Clergy, low moral tone of, in time 
of Georges, 865. 

Clericis Laicos, the Bull, 311. 

Clive, Robert, Lord, successes in 
India, 900; conquers Bengal, 
905; death, 931. 

Closter-seven, convention of, 903. 

Cluniac naovement, the influence of 
the, in England, 199. 

Clyde, see Campbell. 

Coalition against France, the first, 
953; the second, 956; the third, 
962; the fourth, 972; the fifth, 
972, 973. 
Ministry, the, 943; overthrown, 
943. 

Cobbett, William, agitates for par- 
liamentary reform, 978 ; elected 
to parliament under Reform 
Bill of 1832, 995. 

Cobden, Richard, prominent in at- 
tack on Corn LaAvs, 1003. 

Cobham Plot, the, 625. 

Cochrane, Thomas, assists Greek 
insurgents, 984; forces battle 
of Navarino, 985. 

Coercion Act, 995. 

Coffee, fii'st introduced in England, 
859; houses under Charles II., 
769. 

Coinage, early adultex'ation of, 205, 
212, 556, 567, 568, 575; restored 
by Elizabeth, 595 ; by William 
III., 827, 828; specie payment 
suspended during French Revo- 
lution, 955; resumed, 978. 

Coke, Sir Edward, chief justice, 
supports independence of 
courts, 636; dismissed, 637; re- 
news struggle in parliament, 



639-641 ; attacks judicial abuses, 
647, 648; death, 666. 

Cold Stream Guards, origin of, 748. 

Colonies, English, in western hem- 
isphere, 809, 896; French, in 
western hemisphere, 810; rela- 
tions of English and French, 
897 ; progress of English, 1012, 
1013. 

Commons, development of the, 
Council of St. Albans, 254; of 
Oxford, 257; Montfort's parlia- 
ment, 290; the model parlia- 
ment, 307-309; the parliament 
of York, 344; later years of Ed- 
ward III., 397; under Lancas- 
trian kings, 430, 441, 442, 443, 
475, 476; nature of struggle of, 
with Stuarts, 618-633; see also 
parliament. 

Coimmma, the, 343. 

Commendation, defined, 175. 

Commerce, English, growth of, 304, 
494, 495, 807, 808, 809. 

Commonwealth, proclaiined, 708 ; 
on the seas, 716; respected in 
Europe, 716, 717; war with 
Spain, 735; war with Holland, 
719-730. 

Company of Jesus, see Jesuits. 

Comprehension Act, the, 750. 

Comyn, John, victor at Roslin, 330; 
death, 331. 

Congregation, Lords of the, 593. 

Conservatives, origin of party, 1009. 

Continental system, 9.54; effect of, 
965; completion of, 966; failure 
of, 968. 

Contract, the Great, 631. 

Conventicle Act, the, 751. 

Cook, Captain, discoveries of, 949. 

Cooper, Anthony Ashley, earl of 
Shaf fcesbuiy, member of Cabal, 
761; lord chancellor, 764; leader 
of Country Party, 768; im- 
prisoned, 769 ; the Habeas Cor- 
pus Act, 773; favors Mon- 
mouth, 775, 776, 779; struggle 
for Exclusion Bill, 771 ; end of 
career, 778, 779. 

Coote, Colonel Eyre, defeats Count 
Lally at Wandewash, 907. 

Copenhagen, battle of, 958, 959 

Copyholder, the, 373. 

Corbiesdale, battle of, 713, 713. 



INDEX 



1077 



Corn Law of 1815, 976, 977. 

Corn Laws, agitation against, 1003, 
1014; repealed, 1015. 

Cornwall, conquered by West Sax- 
ons, 54. 

Cornwallis, Lord, in America, 939; 
in Ireland, 955. 

Corporation Act, 750. 

Corporations, attacked by Charles 
II., 779,780; by James II., 791, 
792; reform of the, 991-994. 

Cotton famine, the, 1033, 1034. 

Council of Clarendon, the, Henry 
IL's, 218. 
Lillibourne, the, William I.'s, 

135. 
Oxford, the, John's, 257. 
Oxford, the, Henry III.'s, 281. 
Salisbury, the, William I.'s, 171. 
St. Albans, the, John's, 254. 
St. Paul's, the, John's, 256. 
Westminster, William I.'s, 155. 
Westminster, Henry II. 's, 218. 
Woodstock, Henry II. 's, 216; con- 
tinued under parliament, see 
also Magnum Concilium. 

Counties palatine, established by 
William I.. 168. 

County Councils, 1062. 

Court-baron, the, 176. 

Counts, the royal, 194, 212, 302, 620, 
621 ; see also judicature Act. 

Courtenay, Edward, conspires 
against Queen Mary, 577, 578; 
death, 579. 

Courts, local, decline of, 194; source 
of royal revenue, 195. 

Covenant, the Scottish National, 
664. 

Covenanters, persecutions of, 755. 

Cranmer, Thomas, archbishop of 
Canterbury, aids Henry Vm. 
in divorce, 539, 550; favors 
Protestantism, 557 ; issues 
Prayer Book, 564; death, 583. 

"Craftsman" the, 860, 878. 

Crecy, battle of, 365-367. 

Crimean War, 1022-1026. 

Crompton, Samuel, inventor of the 
spinning mule, 912. 

Cromwell, Oliver, member from 
Huntingdonshire, 687 ; organ- 
izes the Ironsides, 688 ; at Mars- 
ton Moor, 690; Naseby, 693; 
seizes Charles I., 699; Preston, 



703; crushes Levellers, 709; in 
Ireland, 711, 712; Dunbar, 714; 
crushes rising of Scots, 715; 
attitude toward Dutch war, 
718; expels the Rump, 721; 
position after expulsion of 
Rump, 722, 723 ; the Nominated 
Parliament, 724; lord protector, 
727-729; reforms of, 731, 732 
his parliaments, 733, 735, 737 
absolute rule of, 734 ; death, 738 
character and personal traits, 
738, 739. 
Richard, succeeds Oliver as lord 

protector, 739 ; failure of, 741. 
Thomas, secretary of state to 
Henry VIII., 543; favors re- 
forms, 544-551; his Lutheran 
alliance, 551; fall and death, 
522 

Crusades, 188, 227, 233, 234, 296, 
414. 

Crystal Palace, 1020. 

Cumberland, Ernest, duke of, be- 
comes king of Hanover, 999. 
George, duke of, Fontenoy, 892; 
Hastenbeck, 903; Colloden, 894; 
Closter-seven, 903. 

Cunobelinus, 7. 

Curia Regis, 169, 170, 194, 213. 

Custom, the Great, 304. 

Cuthred, 54. 

Dacre, homage of, 83. 

Dalhousie, Lord, in India, 1013; 
annexations of, 1027, 1028. 

Danby, see Osborn. 

Danegeld, first payment of, 108; 
second, 109; third. 111; abol- 
ished by Edward the Confessor, 
170; revived by William I., 
156, 170, 171. 

Danelagh, the, established, 63, 67. 

Danes, the, in England, 55, 56, 57, 
62-65, 74, 75, 107-115. 

Danish kings in early England, 
106-124. 

Darien Company, the, 846. 

Darnley, Henry Stuart, Lord, mar- 
ries Mary Queen of Scots, 898. 

David I., king of Scotland, ally of 
Matilda of Anjou, 204. 
II., king of Scotland, 355, 368, 
432. 

Dauphin, the, origin of title, 379. 



1078 



INDEX 



Dawstoiie, battle of, 23. 

Debt, the national, founded, 822. 

Decemvirate, the, 723. 

Declaratory Act, the, 925. 

Delhi, capture of, 1029. 

Demesne, the, 173. 

Dennisburn, battle of, 41. 

Deorham, battle of, 23. 

Derby, see Stanley. 

Dermot of Leicester, Irish chief- 
tain, 224. 

Derwentwater, revolt of, 868. 

Desmond, see Fitzgerald. 

Despenser, Hugh le, justiciar of 
Henry III., killed at Evesham, 
293. 
Hugh le, the elder, 342 ; triumph 

of, 344; death of, 346. 
Hugh le, the younger, 342 ; influ- 
ence of, 344 ; fall of, 346. 

Dettingen, battle of, 889. 

Devereaux, Robert, earl of Essex, 
favorite of Elizabeth, in Ire- 
land, 614; intrigue and death, 
615. 
Robert, second earl of Essex, 
parliamentary genei'al, cam- 
paign of Edgehill, 684 ; relieves 
Gloucester, 686; at Newbury, 
686 ; at Lostv/ithiel, 691 ; loses 
position by Self-»Denying Ordi- 
nance, 693. 

Devolution, war of, 761. 

De Witt, grand pensioner of Hol- 
land, 756, 764. 

Disestablishment, the Act of, 1045. 

Disraeli, Benjamin, earl of Beacons- 
field, opposes repeal of Corn 
Laws, 1015, 1016; member of 
first Derby ministry, 1021 ; of 
second Derby ministry, 1032, 
1033; prime minister, 1040; re- 
form bill of, 1040, 1041 ; opposes 
Irish disestablishment, 1044 ; re- 
signs, 1044; second ministr3% 
policy in Russia-Turkish war, 
1049, 1050, 1051; decline of in- 
fluence, 1052 ; death, 1052. 

Dissenters, founding of body of, 
751, 752, 756; see also Claren- 
don Code, mid the Corporation 
Act 

Distraint of knighthood, 304, 672. 

Divine right of kings, 619, 622, 803, 
804, 806. 



Domesday Survey, the, 171. 

Dominicans, the, in England, 320. 

Dona, defined, 177. 

Dost Mohammed, regains Afghanis- 
tan, 1013. 

Douglas, Archibald, earl of, cap- 
tured at Homildon Hill, 433; 
part in first rising of the Per- 
cies, 434, 435. 

Dover, treaties of, 762, 763. 

Drake, Sir Francis, voyages of, 603; 
expedition to Cadiz, 609, 616. 

Drapier Letters, the, 860. 

Druids, the, 6. 

Dry den, John, his "Absalom and 
Achitophel," 778. 

Ducal families, disastrous results 
of creating, 428. 

Dudley, Edmund, minister of 
Henry VII., 508; death, 513. 
John, earl of Warwick, 560 ; suc- 
ceeds Somerset in council, 567 ; 
his Protestantism, 568; his re- 
forms, 569; duke of Northum- 
berland, 572; proclaims "Queen 
Jane," 578; fall and death, 574. 
Guilford, marries Lady Jane 

Grey, 572; death, 578. 
Robert, earl of Leicester, favorite 
of Elizabeth, 537 ; expedition to 
Holland, 607. 

Dunbar, battle of, 713, 714. 

Dundee, see Graham. 

Duuois, general of Charles VII. of 
France, 452. 

Dunkirk, acquisition of, 735, 741 ; 
sale of, 755. 

Dunstan, early career of, 93-95; at 
Glastonbury, 95 ; character and 
accomplishments, 95, 96; ex- 
pelled from Wessex, 98; arch- 
bishop, 99; part in naonastic 
controversy, 103; death, 105. 

Dupplin Moor, battle of, 354. 

Duquesne, Fort, built 897, 898; 
Braddock's campaign against, 
898 : captured and renamed by 
English, 906. 

Dutch, the, see Netherlands and 
Holland, 
the first war, 717, 738; the 
second, 756. 

Earldoms, founding of the great, 
91. 



INDEX 



1079 



East Anglia, early settlement of, 
31; inti'od viction of Chris- 
tianity, 38; confederation of 
Raedwald, 34, 36; see Danes in 
England. 

Eastern question, the, origin of, 
950; influence of French Revo- 
lution on, 951, 956; reopened 
by Greek revolt, 984; Palnier- 
ston's policy toward, 1004; 
Afghan wars, 1013, 1036; the 
Crimean war, 1022; the Russia- 
Turkish war, 1049, 1050. 

East India Company, the, 613, 808, 
830, 1031 ; see also Clive, Hast- 
ings, Dalhousie, Mutiny, 
the French, 811. 

Eastland Company, 809. 

Ecclesiastical courts, organized by 
William I., 179, 180; supported 
by Becket, 217, 318; powers of, 
restricted by Edward III., 390. 

Edbald, 36, 40. 

Edgar, the Peaceful, accession to 
crown, 98; conduct of reign, 
99, 101 ; death, 101 ; character 
of reign, 102. 
Etheling, elected kinsr, 146. 

Edgehiil, battle of, 684."^ 

Edinburgh, founding of, 37. 

Edington, battle of, 66. 

Edith, queen of Edward the Con- 
fessor, 127, 129. 

Edmund Crouchback, earl of Lan- 
caster, 294, 427, 439. 
king of East Anglia, the Martyr, 

63. 
king of West Saxons, 88-89, 96. 
Ironside, 115-117. 

Edred, 87 , relations to Dunstan, 95. 

Edric, the Grasper, 115, 116, 117. 

Education, public, grant of 1839, 
1006 ; F o r s t e r ' s Elementary 
Education Act, 1046. 

Edward I., in Barons' War, 286- 
291; wins Evesham, 293; cru- 
sade of, 296; character and suc- 
cession, 397; Welsh campaign, 
298, 299 ; reforms of, 300-310 ; re- 
lations to church, 310 ; quarrels 
with barons, 313-315; confirms 
charters, 314; arbitrator in 
Scottish succession, 335; war 
of, with France, 326 ; Scottish 
wars of, 327-332 ; death of, 333. 



Edward II., first prince of Wales, 
350; accession to English 
crown, 335; troubled reign of, 
336-348; deposition and death, 
348. 

III., appointed guardian of the 
kingdom, 346; accession of, 
350; seizes and executes Mor- 
timer, 353; character of, 353; 
restores order in kingdom, 353; 
interferes in Scottish affairs, 
354; begins Hundred Years' 
War, 3.55-369; claims French 
crown, 359 ; Crecy, 362-367 ; in- 
fluence of war on England, 369- 
375 ; campaigns of Black Prince, 
376-380; decline of prestige, 
381-396; death, 396. 

IV., Mortimer's Cross, 472; pro- 
claimed, 473; first reign, 476- 
480; character, 477; expelled 
by Warwick, 480, 481 ; return 
of, 483; second reign, 486; 
death, 487. 

v., supplanted by Richard III., 
488, 489; murdered in the 
Tower, 491. 

VI., 551, 557, 5.59, 585. 

VII. , accession of, 1067 ; new era 
begins with his reign, 1068. 

prince of Wales, son of Henry 
VI., 465, 481; slain at Tewkes- 
bury, 484. 

the Confessor, accession, 135; 
charactei', 136; reign, 135-134; 
death, 134. 

the Elder, accession of, 77; re- 
conquest of Danelagh, 78-81 ; 
death of, 83 ; laws of, 83. 

the Etheling, recall and death, 
133, 134. 

the Martyr, 102, 103. 
Edwin, king of Northumbria, 36-39. 

earl of Mercia, 138, 146, 150. 
Edwy, accession of, 97 ; death, 99. 
Egbert, 53, 54, 55, 59, 61. 
Egfrid, 46, 49. 
Egypt, Napoleon in, 956; English 

secure control of, 1056, 1057. 
"Eikon Basilike," appearance of, 

705. 
Eliot, Sir John, 644, 645, attacks 
the crown, 647; his resolutions, 
653 ; imprisonment and death, 
653. 



1080 



INDEX 



Elizabeth, queen, birth, 541 ; im- 
prisoned, 579; character and 
policy, 587, 588; religious sym- 
pathies, 589, 590 ; policy 
toward Philip of Spain, 592; 
peace policy, 595, 596; toward 
Catholics, 596; relations with 
Mary Queen of Scots, 595, 599 ; 
excommunication of, 600, 601 ; 
authority over church, 603; 
wars of, 603, 606, 612; persecu- 
tion under, 604; death, 615. 
of York, marries Henry VII., 501. 

Elizabethan age, the, 615, 616. 

Ellandune, battle of, 54. 

Ellesmere canal, constructed, 915. 

Emma, Norman wife of Ethelred, 
109, 110; of Canute, 133, 134. 

Emmet, Robert, Irish patriot, 961. 

Employers' Liability Act, 1053. 

Empson, Richard, m i n i s t e r of 
Henry VII., 508; death. 513. 

Enclosure Acts of George III."s 
reign, 918. 

Engagement, the, 701. 

English, increased use of, language, 
growth of, literature in four- 
teenth and fifteenth centuries, 
398-403. 

Enniskillen, siege of, 815, 816. 

Eorl, the, 38. 

Escheat and forfeiture, 177. 

Escurial, Treaty of, the, .see Bour- 
bon Family Compact. 

Essex, see Devereaux. 

Estates, the, 306, 307. 

Etaples, Treaty of, 504. 

Ethelbald, 51, 53, 60. 

Ethelbert, of Kent, 33, 34 ; laws of, 
35, 36. 

Ethelburga, instrumental in intro- 
ducing Christianity into North- 
umberland, 37. 

Ethelfrid,of Northumbria, 23, 24, 36. 

Ethelings, 55. 

Ethelred the Redeless, accession of, 
104; character of, 105-107; mar- 
riage of, 109; Danish wars of, 
107-115; deposed and restored, 
114; death, 115. 

Ethelwulf, father of Alfred, 59, 60. 

Eugene of Savoy, commands im- 
perial army in Italy, 839; joins 
Marlborough at Blenlieim, 841 ; 
later campaign of, 845, 850. 



Eugenius IV., pope, calls Congress 

of Arras, 456. 
Eustace of Boulogne, visit to Eng- 
land, 138. 
son of Stephen, 309, 310. 
Evesham, battle of, 391-293. 
Exchequer, court of, see Courts 
Royal, 
table, method of computation at, 

213. 
stop of the, 763. 
Excise, and customs, 880. 

Bill, the, 880. 
Exclusion Bill, the, 772, 777. 

Factory legislation, 996, 1019. 

Fairfax, Ferdinand, Lord, parlia- 
mentary general, 685, 686. 
Sir Thomas, at Hull, 686, 687; 
Nantwich, 689; at Marston 
Moor, 690; at Langport, 695; 
placed in command of New 
Model, 699; wins Naseby, 700; 
suppresses royalists, 703; re- 
tires, 713; raises northern 
counties to resist Charles II., 
715; supports Monk, 744. 

Falaise, Treaty of, 226. 

Falkirk, battle of, 329. 

Fami lists, the, 706. 

Family party, the, 853. , 

Fawkes, Guy, 627. 

Felix of Burgundy, missionary to 
East Anglians, 38. 

Fenians, the, 1044. 

Fenwick, Sir John, last death by 
attainder, 837. 

Ferdinand of Aragon, conquers 
Grenada, 509, note ; unites with 
Maximilian against Charles 
VIII. of France, 509; ally of 
Henry VIL, 510; of Henry 
VIII.; 515; death, 517. 
of Brunswick, marshal of Fred- 
erick II. , 905 ; wins Crefeld and 
Minden, 906, 907, 908. 

Feudal customs, 176, 177. 
reaction, 202-229. 

Feudalism, introduced, 172. 

Fifth Monarchy Men, the, 706. 

Finch, Daniel, speaker of House, 
653, 653, 666, 671. 
earl of Nottingham, the Tolera- 
tion Act, 814 ; favors Occasional 
Conformity Bill 843. 



II!5"DEX 



1081 



Fire, the Great, of 1666, 757. 

First Fiaiits, see Annates. 

Fisher, John, bishop of Rochester, 
540-543. 

Fitz-Alan, Richard, earl of Arundel, 
403, 410, 421, 422. 

Fitzgerald, Garrett, earl of Des- 
mond, revolt of, 632. 

Fitz-Osbern, lieutenant of William 
I., 154, 155, 182. 

Fitz-Osbert, William, "Long- 
beard," popular agitator, 238, 
239. 

Fitz-Peter, Geoffrey, justiciar of 
John and Richard I., 240, 246, 
256, 257. 

Fitzroy, Augustus, duke of Graf- 
ton, ministry of, 925-929. 

Five Boroughs, the, of Mercia, 64; 
conquest of, 81. 

Five Mile Act, the, 751. 

Flambard, Ralph, minister of Wil- 
liam XL, 185, 186. 

Flanders, alliance of court of, with 
William I., 136; alliance with 
Edward III., 356, 358; cam- 
paigns of Marlborough in, 839, 
850, 851 ; see also Burgundy and 
Netherlands. 

Flodden, battle of, 516. 

Folk-land, 30, 152. 

Fontenoy, battle of, 892. 

Forestallers, the, 376, 377. 

Forest courts, the, 172. 
laws, 171. 

Forests, charter of the, 269. 

Forfeiture, 176. 

Forster, William E., his Education 
Act, 1046; his Protection for 
Life and Property Act, 1054. 

Four Bills, the, 702. 

Fox, Charles James, 932; Libel 
Act, 930 ; sympathy with 
America, 933; Whig leader, 
940, 941 ; in coalition ministry, 
943; his India Bill, 943; in min- 
istry of All the Talents, 963; 
death, 963. 

Francis I., emperor, election of, 
903, note. 
II., wars with France, 952, 953, 
954, 956, 962; renounces im- 
perial title, 963. 
I. of France, 517; candidate 
for imperial honors, 518; wars 



with Charles V., 519-521; the 
Field of Cloth of Gold, 520; 
wars with Henry VIII., 555, 
556; death, 560. 
Sir Philip, supposed author of 
Junius letters, 928; attack upon 
Warren Hastings, 947. 

Franciscans, the, in England, 319, 
320. 

Frankpledge, the, 168. 

Frederick I., emperor, Barbarossa, 
222, 233. 
II., emperor, wars with popes, 

278; death, 279. 
elector of Saxony, candidate for 

imperial honors, 578. 
Louis, Prince of Wales, joins op- 
position, 881 ; death, 886. 
II. of Pru.ssia, wars of, with Maria 
Theresa, 888, 889, 890, 891; 
in Seven years' war, 899-910; 
death, 950. 
William of Prussia, declares 
against French Republic, 951, 
952; wars with Napoleon, 963, 
964, 972, 973, 974. 

Free trade, advocated by Adam 
Smith, 918; adopted by Wil- 
liam Pitt, 946; furthered by 
Huskisson, 981; by Peel, 1014; 
by Gladstone, 1039. 

French Republic, wars with Europe, 
952, 953, 954. 

French Revolution, early attitude 
of Great Britain toward, 951 ; 
effect upon England and Ire- 
land, 955 ; change in character 
of movement, 959. 

Fyrd, the ancient land, 27, 28, 71 ; 
reorganized by Henry II., 226, 

097 

the ship, 74, 111, 112. 



Gaels, division of Celts, 5, 15. 

Gage, general, in Boston, 934-987. 

Gaillard Chateau, 241. 

Gardiner, Stephen, bishoi? of Win- 
chester, supports conservative 
reform, 553; deposed by Somer- 
set, 568; adviser of Mary, 575, 
577, 579, 581, 582; death, 585. 

Gaveston, Piers, favorite of Edwai'd 
II., 334; first fall of, 335; second 
fall, and death, 336. 



1082 



INDEX 



Geoffrey, duke of Brittany, son of 
Henry II., 225, 333. 
Plantagenet, count of Anjou, 

father of Henry II., 208. 
son of Henry II., archbishop of 
York, opposes Longchanij), 228, 
233, 235. 

Geneva Award, the, 1035, 1048. 

George I., accession of, 858; Eng- 
land at time of accession, 861- 
867; reign of, 867-876; last 
years and death, 876. 
II., as prince of Wales, 870; ac- 
cession of, 877; supports Wal- 
pole, 884 ; favors Austrian war, 
890; repudiates convention of 
Closter-seven, 905; death of, 
908. 
III. , accession and policy of, 908 ; 
England under, 911-919; char- 
acter of, 919; the "king's 
friends," 920; attempts to pun- 
ish Wilkes, 922, 927; attitude 
toward America, 935; personal 
rule abandoned, 941 ; opposes 
Catliolic emancipation, 966 ; 
madness of, 970 ; death of, 979. 
IV. , appointed regent, 970 ; acces- 
sion, 979; unpopularitv of, 979- 
980; reign, 979-989; death, 990. 
prince of Denmark, husband of 
Anne, abandons James II., 799; 
nonentity of, 886. 

German unity, beginning of, 1035. 

Gesith.% the, 28. 

Gibraltar, taken by English, 843. 

Gild, the, 9, 242, 

Gin Act, the, 882. 

Ginkel, Dutch commander of Wil- 
liam III., in Ireland, 816, 817. 

Gladstone, William Ew^art, 1016; 
chancellor of exchequer, 1022; 
spokesman of Liberals, 1039; 
Reform Bill of , 1040; first min- 
istry, 1044; dealing with Irish 
question, 1045; reforms under, 
1046, 1047; foreign policy, 1048; 
fall of first ministry, 1048; 
second ministry, 1052; new re- 
forms, 1053, i054, 1058; the 
Soudan, 1057, 1058; defeat of 
second ministry, 1059 ; con- 
verted to Home Rule, 1060; 
third ministry of, 1060; first 
Home Rule Bill, 1061 ■, fourth 



ministry of, 1062 ; second Home 
Rule Bill, 1063; retirement, 
1063; death, 1064. 

Glanville, Ranulf de, justiciar of 
Richard I., 231, 234, 300. 

Glencoe, massacre of, 819, 820. 

Glendower, Owen, revolt of, 433; 
submits to Heniy IV., 436. 

Gloucester, siege of, by Charles I., 
686. 
see Clare. 

Humphrey, duke of, brother of 
Henry V., 450, 451, 456; death, 
459. 
Thomas, diike of, 415, 417; expels 
Richard II. 's favorites, 418; 
dismissed from council, 419, 
421 ; death, 422. 

Goderich, see Robinson. 

Godiva, wife of Leofric of Mercia, 
124. 

Godolphin, in ministry of Anne, 
847, 853, 

Godwin, earl of Wessex, 123, 124; 
popularity of, 127, 128; out- 
lawed, 129; return of, 132; 
death and character of, 132, 
133; sons of, 133. 

Goodwin's case, 629. 

Gordon, Charles George, "Chinese 
Gordon," in the Soudan, 1058. 
George Hamilton, earl of Aber- 
deen, 1016; 25^'i'iie minister, 
1022, 1023. 
Riots, 931. 

Goring, royal governor of Ports- 
mouth, 683; at Marston Moor, 
690; defeated by Fairfax, 695. 

Grace, Act of, 821. 

Graces, the, 659. 

Grafton, see Fitzroy. 

Graham, John, of Claverhouse, 
viscount of Dundee, attempts 
to suppress Covenanters, 774; 
supports Jacobites in Scotland, 
818; death, 819. 

Grand Alliance, the, 834. 
Game Act, 1053. 

Granville, earl, see Carteret. 

Great Britain, see Union, Act of. 

Great Council, see Magnum Con- 
cilium. 

Greek Revolt, the, 983-985. 

Gregory I., pope, interested in Eng- 
' lish missions, 34, 35. 



INDEX 



1083 



Gregory VII., pope, relations to 
William I. , 179, 180. 
IX. , pope, relations to Henry III. , 

273, 277. 
XI., pope, removes papal resi- 
dence from Avignon to Rome, 
413. 
XIIL, devises Gregorian Calen- 
dar, 895. 

Grenville, George, minister of 
George III., 921; the Wilkes 
case, 921-923; the Stamp Act, 
92?; the Regency Bill, 924; bill 
transferring disputed election 
cases to special committee of 
House, 929. 
William, Lord, prime minister, 
963; defeated in proposal to 
remove military disqualifica- 
tions from Catholics, 966 ; abol- 
ishes slave trade, 966. 

Gresham, Sir Thomas, founder of 
Royal Exchange, 616. 

Grey, Charles, Lord, Whig leader 
and advocate of parliamentary 
reform, 990; prime minister, 
991; the Reform Bill, 991-994; 
slavery abolished, 966; Poor 
Laws reformed, 996, 997 ; 
resigns, 997; success of min- 
istry, 997. 
Henry, duke of Suffolk, rises 

against Mary, 578. 
Lady Jane, marries Guilford 
Dudley, 672 ; proclaimed queen, 
573; death, 578. 

Grosseteste, Robert, bishop of Lin- 
coln, 278, 319. 

Gualo, papal legate to Henry III., 
267, 268, 269. 

Guesclin, Bertrand du, 383, 385, 386, 
387, 452. 

Gunpowder, use of, 365-367, 487. 
Plot, the, 627, 628. 

Guthrum, Danish king, submits to 
Alfred, 65, 67. 

Guy of Lusignan, 227, 233. 

Habeas Corpvis Act, the, 772; sus- 
pended, 827, 953, 1044. 
Hadrian's wall, 11. 
Haeretico Covibnrendo, the Bill, 440. 
Hales case, 788. 
Halidon Hill, battle of, 354. 
Halifax, see Montague and Saville. 



Hamilton, James, representative of 
Charles I. in Scotland, 665; 
beaten at Preston, 703. 

Hampden, John, refuses to pay ship 
money, 657 ; jjarliamentary 
leader, -670, 676, 679; death of , 
685. 

Hampton Court Conference, 626. 

Hanover, Convention of, 894. 
House of, succeeds to English 

throne, 856, 861. 
separated from English crown, 
999. 

Hardicanute, 123, 124. 

Harfleur, battle of, 445. 

Hargreaves, James, inventor of 
spinning jenny, 912. 

Hai-ley, Robert, earl of Oxford, 
856, 868, 872. 

Harold Hardrada, 137, 139. 
Harefoot, 123. 
of Denmark, 115. 

son of Godwin, 127, 128, 134; king 
of England, 134; northern cam- 
paign of, 138-140; loses battle 
of Hastings, 141-144. 

Harrison, parliamentary general, 
721, 724, 747. 

Hartington, marquis of, see Caven- 
dish. 

Hasting, Danish chieftain, 75, 76. 

Hastings, battle of 142-144. 
John, claimant to Scottish 

throne, 324. 
Warren, governor - general of 
India, 931; trial of, ^947. 

Hatfield, battle of, 40. 
Synod of, 45. 

Havelock, Henry, march of, to 
Cawnpore, 1029, 1030; relieves 
Lucknow, 1030. 

Heads of the Proposals, the, 700. 

Healfdene, 61, 62, 64, 65. 

Hearth tax, 385, 813. 

Hengist and Horsa, traditional con- 
quest of Kent by, 19. 

Hengistdun, battle of, 59. 

Henrietta Maria, queen of Charles 
I., 642, 654; intrigues of, 695, 
671, 680. 

Henry, bishop of Winchester, aids 

Stephen, 203 ; aids Matilda, 205. 

cardinal of York, last of elder 

line of Stuarts, 894. 
eldest son of Henry II. of Eng- 



1084 



IKDEX 



land, crowned, 223; rebels 

against father, 225. 
Henry IV., emperor, attitude of 

court of, to Norman invasion 

of England, 135. 
v., emperor, son-in-law of Henry 

I. of England, 195, 196. 
VI., emperor, imprisons Richard 

I. , 285. 
prince of Wales, son of James I. , 

early death of, 635. 

I. of England, accession of, 189; 
policy of, 189, 197; charter of, 
189, 190 ; war with brother Rob- 
ert, 190; with Louis VI., of 
France, 191 ; quarrel with 
Ansehn, 192 ; judicial courts of, 
194, 195; taxation under, 195; 
death and character of, 197; 
education during his reign, 199. 

II. of England, power in Nor- 
mandy, 208, 209; accession to 
English throne, 210, 211 ; reor- 
ganization of kingdom, 212, 213, 
219, 220; quarrel with Becket, 
216-223; with his barons, 225, 
226; proposes crusade, 227, 228; 
death of, 228. 

III. of England, coronation of, 
266, 271 ; assumes government, 
272; quarrels with barons, 274- 
277; war with Louis IX., 276; 
misgovernment of, 275-281 ; the 
Provisions of Oxford, 283; of 
Westminster, 286; barons con- 
trol government, 285-288; the 
Mise of Amiens, 288 ; war with 
barons, 288-293; the Mise of 
Lewes, 289; reaction, 295; 
death, 296. 

IV. of England, prominent 
among bai'onage of Richard II. , 
417, 418, 423; deposes Richard 
II., and secures succession, 425, 
426; position of, 433-437; re- 
presses risings of nobles, 431, 
434, 435; invasion of Scotland, 
432; of Wales, 433; death of, 
438; relations with church, 
439. 

V. of England at Shrewsbury, 
434; acts as Henry IV. 's min- 
ister, 435; accession of, 440; 
persecutes Lollards, 441 ; re- 
news war with France, 444; 



Yorkist plot against, 445 ; Agin • 
court, 445-447; marriage of, 
448 ; triumph of, 448 ; death of, 
449. 
Henry VI., birth of, 449; accession 
of, 450 ; character of, 458 ; mar- 
riage of, 458; renewal of 
French war, 459; the year 
1450, 461-463; Yorkist troubles, 
463, 465-473; renews war in 
France, 464 ; supplanted by Ed- 
ward IV., 473; second reign of, 
481-484; murder of, 484. 

VII. of England, Lancastrian 
heir, 490; overthrows Richard 
III. at Bosworth, 492; marries 
Elizabeth of York, 501 ; char- 
acter and policy of, 500; sup- 
presses Yorkist risings, 501, 
504-507; foreign policy of, 504, 
506, 509, 510; despotism of , 507, 
508; death of, 510. 

VIII. of England, marries Cath- 
arine of Aragon, 510, 514; 
character of, 512; foreign policy 
of, 514; French war, 515; last 
French war of, 555; alliance 
with Charles V. of Spain, 520 ; 
with France, 517, 521 ; divorce 
of, 524, 539 ; quarrel with papacy, 
524-534; marries Anne Boleyn, 
540; secures succession for 
daughter Elizabeth, 541 ; sup- 
presses Pilgrimage of Grace, 
545; the monasteries, 546, 547; 
third marriage, 550; fourth and 
fifth marriages, 552 ; tyranny in 
Ireland, 555; invasion of Scot- 
land, 554; death, 558. 

II. of France, death of, 322, 

592. 
IV. of France, of Navarre, reli- 
gious war of, 606; converted 
to Catholicism, 617 ; issues Edict 
of Nantes, 617. 
of Trastamara, wars with Black 
Prince, 383, 384 ; murders Pedro 
the Cruel, 384; accedes to 
throne of, 384. 

Hereward, the outlaw, resists Wil- 
liam I., 166. 

Heriot, the, 122. 

Herrings, battle of the, 452. 

Hertford, Synod of, 45. 

Hexham, battle of, 477. 



INDEX 



1085 



High Commission, court of, insti- 
tuted by Elizabeth, 591; abol- 
ished by Long Parliament, 677, 
672; powers revived by James 
II., 789. 

Hill, Sir Rowland, postal reforms 
of, 1005, 1006. 

Hoche, general, expedition to Ire- 
land, 955. 

Hogue, La, battle of, 820. 

Hohenlinden, battle of ,957. 

Holland, see iSTetherlands. 

Edmu^nd, earl of Kent, conspires 
against Edward II. , 346 ; death, 
352. 
Thomas, earl of Kent, supports 
Richard IL, 416, 417; rising of , 
against Henry IV., 432. 
John, earl of Huntingdon, 416, 
417; rising of, 432. 

Holy Alliance, the, 982, 983, 984, 
986. 
League, the, 514. 

Homage, 176. 

Home Rule, in Ireland in eight- 
eenth centurj', 939 ; advocated 
by Parnell, 1054; by Gladstone, 
1060; Gladstone's bills, 1060, 
1061, 1062. 

Homildon Hill, battle of, 433. 

Honors, 176. 

House-carls, instituted by Canute, 
122; at Stamford Bridge, 139; 
at Hastings, 142-144. 

Howard, Catharine, queen of Henry 
VIII., 553. 
John, efforts at prison reform, 

948, 949. 
of Effingham, Charles, lord, ad- 
miral of Elizabeth, 610. 
Henry, earl of Surrey, executed 

by Henry VIII., 558. 
Thomas, duke of Norfolk, at Flod- 
den, 515, 524; enemy of Wolsey, 
527; represents reactionary re- 
form party, 548, 549; triumphs 
over Cromwell, 552, 553; im- 
prisoned by Henry VIII., 558; 
supports Mary, 574. 
Thomas, duke of Norfolk, 599, 
601. 

Howe, admiral, wins Ushant, 
952. 

Hubert de Burgh, see Burgh. 

Hubert Walter, see Walter. 



Hubertsburg, peace of, 909. 

Hugh of Avalon, bishop of Lincoln, 
239. 
of Puiset, bishop of Durham, jus- 
ticiar, 231. 
the Brave, 246, 276. 

Hundred, the, 29. 
years' war, causes of, 355; first 
stage of, 358-380; second stage 
of, 382-388 ; third stage of, 444- 
449; last stage of, 451-464. 

Huskisson, William, president of 
Board of Trade, 981 ; his Reci- 
procity of Duties Bill, 986 ; re- 
signs, 991; death, 991. 

Hyde, Edward, earl of Clarendon, 
chancellor of Charles II., 746; 
Clarendon Code, 750, 752; op- 
poses Dutch war, 756 ; fall and 
death, 757-759. 



Imperialism, the modern, 1068. 

Incident, the, 675. 

Income tax, adopted by Pitt, 957, 
978; by Peel, 1010; sustained 
by Gladstone, 1039. 

Independence, A merican Declara- 
tion of, 937. _ 

Independents, disputes with Pres- 
byterians, 698; offer terms to 
Charles I. , 700 ; assume control 
of government, 703, 704. 

India, beginning of English settle- 
ment in, 808; Clive in, 899, 900, 
905; causes of mutiny, 1027; 
outbreak and extent of, 1028, 
1029; results of war, 1031. 

Indvilgence, first declaration of 
Charles II., 758; second, 764; 
first of James II., 790; second 
of James IL, 792. 
the Black, in Scotland, 774. 

Industrial revolution, the, 911-916. 

Ine, king of West Saxons, 50 ; laws 
of, 51. 

Inkerman, battle of, 1024. 

Innocent III., pope, the quarrel 
with John, 251-253; John does 
homage to, 254. 
IV., pope, relations to Henry III., 
273, 278, 279. 

Inquest, see Arms and Sheriffs. 

Instrument of Government, the, 
727-729. 



1086 



INDEX 



Interdict, the, imposed on England, 
251. 

Intolerable Acts, the American, 934, 

Investiture, quarrel over, 176. 

Invincibles, the Irish, 1056. 

Ireland, Norsemen in, 58; expedi- 
tion of Strongbow, 224; chief- 
tain submits to Henry II., 224; 
assisted by Scots against Ed- 
ward III., 340; condition of, in 
time of Richard II. , 421 ; revolt 
under Henry VIII., 505; the 
Poynings Acts, 505; under Eliz- 
abeth, 603, 614; Chichester in, 
633, 633; the Plantation of 
Ulster, James I., 632, 633; dur- 
ing the civil war, 710; Crom- 
well in, 710-712; the Restoration 
in, 753; the Revolution in, 815- 
818; Home Rule in, 939; the 
union, 955, 957; the famine, 
depopulation by, 517; landlord- 
ism, 1053, 1054; rise of Home 
Rule party, 1054; Gladstone's 
measures for, 1060-1062; Salis- 
bury's measures for, 1065. 

Ireton, i^arliamentary general, 700, 
704, 712. 

Irish Land Acts, see Land Act. 

Irish night, the, 800. 

Iron mining in England in eight- 
eenth centurj^ 911, 914. 

Ironsides, the, name given by 
Prince Rupert at Marston Moor, 
688. 

Isabella, queen of Edward II., 335, 
345, 346-348, 352. 

Italian unity, secured, 1033. 

Jacobites, conspire against William 
HI., 812, 827, 834; hopelessness 
of their cause, 861-863; rising 
of in 1715, 868; rising of in 1745, 
892-894. 

Jamaica, seized by Cromwell, 810. 

James I. of Scotla,nd, held as pris- 
oner by Henry IV. , 436 ; marries 
Jane Beaufort, 436; release of, 
451. 

IV. of Scotland, inva.des Eng- 
land, 515. 

V. of Scotland, loses Solway 
Moss, 554. 

I. of England, James VI. of Scot- 
land, 599 ; England at his acces- 



sion, 618-622; his character, 
623, 624; offends Puritans and 
Catholics, 626, 627; offends the 
Commons, 628, 629, 636, 637, 
639, 640; seeks union of Eng- 
land and Scotland, 629, 630; 
version of Scriptures, 632; Ul- 
ster Plantation, 633; favorites 
of, 634, 635 ; foreign policy, 634 ; 
opposed by courts, 636, 637; 
death, 642. 

James II. of England, attacked by 
Whigs on Exclusion Bill, 772; 
the "killing time," 775; acces- 
sion, 782; Monmouth's rising, 
783-785; tyranny of, 785, 786; 
attacks church, 789; favors 
Catholics, 787-794; rouses Eng- 
lish national sentiment, 797; 
invasion of William of Orange, 
798-800; flees to France, 801 ; in 
Ireland, 815, 816; death, 834. 

Jamestown, the settlement of, 661. 

Jarrow, 49, 64. 

Jeffreys, judge, attacks corpora- 
tions under Charles II., 779, 
780; the Bloody Assize, 785, 
789 ; on the Irish night, 800. 

Jena, battle of, 964. 

Jenkins's ear, 883. 

Jenkinson, Robert, Lord Liverpool, 
prime minister, 970; reaction- 
ary policy, 978; change in 
later policy, 980, 981, 987. 

Jervis, Sir John, admiral, defeats 
French off St. Vincent, 954. 

Jesuits, influence of order, 598 ; per- 
secuted by Elizabeth, 604, 605. 

Jews, expelled from England by 
Edward I., 305. 

Joan of Arc, 453; at court of 
Charles VII., 454; raises siege 
of Orleans, 4.54 ; capture, trial, 
and death, 455. 

John, king of England (Lackland), 
conspires against Henry II., 
228 ; quarrels with Longchamp, 
232, 233 ; plots against Richard 
I., 235; accession, 245; charac- 
ter, 245; comparison with Eth- 
elred, 106; loses possessions in 
France, 246, 247; quarrel with 
Innocent III., 250, 251 ; struggle 
with barons, 2,54-264 ; the Great 
Charter, 260; death, 265. 



INDEX 



1087 



John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, 
fourth son of Edward III., his 
French campaign, 388 ; intrigues 
of, 389, 390, 393; in Richard 
II. 's reign, 394, 396, 403, 407. 
411; Scottisli campaign of, 415; 
attempts to secure Spanish 
crown, 417; in council of Rich- 
ard II., 422; death, 423. 
king of France, captured at Poi 
tiers, 377, 878 ; failure of ransom 
of, 379, 380. 

Jonson, Ben, 617. 

Judicature Act, the, 1047. 

Junius letters, the, 928. 

Junto, the Whig, 826 ; fall of, 831 ; 
return to power, 853. 

Justices of the peace, origin of, 353. 

Justices-in-eyre, first appointed, 21 9. 

Jutes, the, conquest of Kent, 19-21. 

Kabul, British disaster at, 1013. 

Kalisch, Treaty of, 972. 

Kay, John, inventor of flyiug shut- 
tle, 912. 

Kenilworth, Dictum of, 295. 

Kent, kingdom of, settled by Jutes, 
19-21 ; accepts Christianity, 34, 
35, 42; annexed to Wessex, 61. 
see Holland. 

Khartoum, captured by the Mahdi, 
1058. 

Killiecrankie, battle of, 819. 

King George's War, 897. 

Knight's fees, the, 175. 

Knox, John, Scottish reformer, 593, 
594. 

Kymry, see Welsh. 

Laboiu-ers, Statute of, 374, 375. 

Lamb, William, viscount Mel- 
bourne, member of Wellington 
ministry, 988, 989; joins Grey 
ministry, 991 ; prime minister, 
997, 998 ; Canada question, 1000, 
1001; Irish question, 1001; kept 
in office by Victoria, 1006; fall 
of ministry, 1008. 

Lambei't, parliamentary general, 
715, 724, 747, 749. 

Lambeth, Treaty of, 268. 

Lancaster, house of, 427, 428. 

John, dvike of, see John of Gaunt. 

Thomas, earl of, 334; opposes 

Gaveston, 835, 336; in couJicil 



of Edward II., 341, 342; his 
fall, 343. 

Land Act, the Irish, 1045, 1046, 
1053, 1060. 

Landen, battle of, 821. 

Lanfranc, archbishop of Canter- 
bury, 179, 184, 186. 

Langland, William, 399; "The Vis- 
ion of Piers Plowman," 400. 

Langton, Stephen, elected to see of 
Canterbury, 254; su]3ports bar- 
ons in struggle for the charter. 
256; suspended, 263; obtains re- 
call of Pandulf, 269; death of, 
272. 

Lansdowne. marquis of, see Petty. 

Latimer, Hugh, bishop of Ely, 
under Henry VIII, 550, 553; 
under Edward VI., 563, 564; 
under Mary, 581 ; death, 583. 

Laud, William, archbishop of Can- 
terbury, in London, 651 ; re- 
forms of, 657, 658, 662, 663; 
impeachment of, 671 ; execu- 
tion of. 693 ; his work compared 
with Clarendon's, 752. 

Lauderdale, 755 ; member of Cabal, 
761, 774. _ 

Lawrence, Sir Henry, at Lucknow, 
1029, 1030. 

League of Hanover, 817. 

Leeds, duke of, see Osborne 

Leicester, see Dudley and Montfort. 

Leo X., pope, and the imperial 
election of 1519, 518; ally of 
Charles v., 519. 

Leopold II.. emperor, in convention 
of Pilnitz, 951. 
of Austria, imprisons Richard I., 
235. 

Leslie, Alexander, earl of Leven, 
Scottish general in civil wars, 
665, 675. 
David, Scottish general in civil 
wars, 689-691 ; 694. 713-715. 

Levellers, the, 708, 709. 

Lexington, battle of, 936. 

Lewes, battle of, 289. 
Mise of, 289. 

Liberal party, the, organization 
and growth of, 1009, 1018, 1021, 
1037-1089: disrupted, 1060. 
Union party, the, formed, 1060. 

Liberties, see Honors. 

Librate, the, 175. 



1088 



INDEX 



Lichfield, arcliiepiscopal see 
formed, 53. 

Lilbourne, "Freeborn Jolan," 708, 
709. 

Lillebonne, Council of, 135. 

Lillibullero, 836. 

Limerick, Treaty of, 816. 

Lincoln, the fair of, 268. 

John de la Pole, earl of, see Pole. 

Litany, the first English, 557. 

Liverpool, see Jenkinson. 

Llewelyn, prince of Wales, ally of 
Montfort, 288; war with Ed- 
ward I. , 298 ; death of, 299. 

Lollards, 398, 399, 411-413; perse- 
cuted by Henry IV., 439, 440; 
by Henry V., 441. 

London, in Roman Britain, 8; 
sacked by Boadicea, 9; makes 
stand against William I., 146- 
148 ; during coronation of Wil- 
liam I., 148-150; charters of, 
151, 198; under Richard I., 238, 
239, 242-244; supports barons 
against John, 264; against 
Henry III., 288, 289; in Peasant 
Revolt, 406-409 ; in Cade Revolt, 
461, 462; supports parliament 
again.st Charles I., 683; the 
Great Plague of, 756 ; the Great 
Fire of, 757; the Irish night, 
800; in Anne's time, 856, 857; 
Gordon riots, 931 ; supports 
Wilkes, 927, 928. 
Treaty of, 984. 

Londonderry, siege of, 815. 

Longchamp, William of, justiciar 
of Richard I., 232, 233. 

Long Parliament, see Parliament. 

Loo, Declaration of, 799. 

Lords-lieutenant, 680, 683. 

'"Lose-Coat Field," battle of, 480. 

Lostwithiel, battle of, 691. 

Lothian, session of, 120. 

Louis VIII. , assists barons against 
John, 264; retires from Eng- 
land, 268. 
IX., war with Henry III., 276; 

arbitration of 288. 
XL, aids Warwick against Ed- 
ward IV., 481; war with Ed- 
ward IV., 485. 
XII., wars with Henry VIII., 
514; marriage witli Mary Tu- 
dor, 517. 



Louis XIII. , war of Charles I, with, 

642, ,643, 646. 

XIV. , assists Dutch against 
Charles II., 756; policy of 
French aggression, 761, 762; 
Treaties of Dover, 763; Dutch 
war, 764-767 ; persecutes Hugue- 
nots, 787; quarrel with pope, 
796 ; aids James II. , 816 ; accepts 
Peace of Ryswick, 829; renews 
war with England, 834, 835; 
Treaty of Utrecht, 854, 855. 

XV., see Bourbon Family Com- 
pacts, and Austrian succession, 
war of. 

XVI., aids Americans, 938; at- 
tempted flight of, 951; death, 
952. 

XVIII., restored to French 
throne, 972 ; second restoration 
of, 974. 

Phihppe, 990. 1004, 1017. 
Lovel, rising of, 501. 
Loyal Association, the, 827. 
Loyola, Ignatius, 598. 
Lucknow, siege of, 1029, 1030. 

Macon's Bill, No. 2., 970. 

Madrid, Treaty of, 895. 

Magenta, battle of, 1033. 

Magna Charta, see Charter. 

Magnuvi CGncilium, 168; change in 
nature of, 193, the last, 667, 
see Council. 

Maqnii.s Intercursus, 506. 

Mahdi, the, in Egypt, 1057. 

Mahon, see Stanhope. 
Port, acquired by British, 855; 
lost by Byng, 900. 

Main Plot, the, 625. 

Majuba Hill, battle of, 1056. 

Malcolm Canmore, king of Scot- 
land, w^ars with William I., 
158; does homage to William 
11., 180. 

Malplaquet, battle of, 851. 

Malta, acquired by Britain, 958, 960. 

Malthus, theory of i^opulation, 919. 

Maltote, the, 314. 

Manchester, earl of, see Montague. 

Manor, the, 172, 173. 

Mansfield, chief justice, 927, 930; 
famous decision upon slavery, 
949, 950. 

March, see Mortimer. 



IKDBX 



1089 



Mare, Peter de la, 393, 403. 

Marengo, battle of, 957. 

Margaret, of Anjou, marries Henry 
VI., 458; her influence, 463; in 
Wars of the Roses, 466-485. 
the Maid of Norwa\', 324. 

Maria Theresa, in wav of Austrian 
succession, 888-894; the Seven 
years' war, 899. 

Marie Antoinette, [execution of, 952. 

Marignano, battle of, 517. 

Mark, the value of the, 188, note. 

Marlborough, see Churchill. 

Marprelate Tracts, the, 612. 

Marriage Act, the, 896. 

Marshal, William, earl of Pem- 
broke, 259, 263 ; appointed gov- 
ernor of England 266; reissues 
the charter, 267,' 268; issues 
Charter of the Forests, 269 ; his 
death, 270. 
Eichard, earl of Pembroke, 274, 

275. 
William, the younger, earl of 
Pembroke, 274. 

Marston Moor, battle of, 689, 690. 

Martin Marprelate Tracts, 612. 

Mary, queen of England, 568, 569; 
572-574; early moderation of, 
575, 576; marries Philip of 
Spain, 577-579; restores paj^al 
authority, 580; persecutions of, 
581-583, 585; war with France, 
loses Calais, 584; death, 585, 
586. 
daughter of James II., marriage 
of, 767 ; shares croTvn -with Wil- 
liam, 802; crowned, 803; death, 
823. 
queen of Scots, nia.rries Francis 
II., 561. 592; returns to Scot- 
land, 592; religious quarrels, 
594; marries Darnley, 598 
Bothwell, 598; flight to Eng 
land, 599 ; the Ridolfi plot 601 
death, 608. 

Maryland, settled by Calverts, 662 
religious toleration in, 662. 

Maserfield, battle of, 41. 

Matilda, daughter of Henry I. 
marries Henry V. of Germany 
195 ; made Henry I. 's successor 
and marries Geoffrey of Anjou 
196; fails in securing the sue 
cession to English crown, 202 



203; wars with Stephen, 204- 
208. 

Matilda, queen of William I. , 158. 
qvieen of Stephen, 204; defeats 
Matilda of Anjou, 207. 

McCarthy, Justin, Irish commander 
at Newtown Butler, 816. 
Justin, Irish leader, 1062. 

Meanwara, see Jutes. 

Mehemet Ali, revolt of, 1004. 

Melbourne, see Lamb. 

Mercia, rise of, 39, 41 ; Christianity 
in, 42; divisions of, 46; second 
rise of, 51; Ethelfleda in, 79-81. 

Merton, the battle of, 63. 

Methodism, rise and influence of, 
886, 887. 

Methuen Treaty, 882, see also Gin 
Act and Porteous Riots. 

Metternich, Austrian minister, see 
Holy Alliance. 

Milan Decree, the, 966. 

Militia Ordinance, 680. 

Milled edge, the, adopted, 828. 

Millenary Petition, the, 626. 

Milton, John, in tract war, 675; 
author of "Eikonoklastes," 705 ; 
advocates freedom of the press, 
825. 

Minden, battle of, 906, 907. 

Minorca, see Port Mahon. 

Moltke von, 1035. 

Monasteries, the early, 34, 35, 40, 
41, 49, 58, 62; in time of Dun- 
stan, 93-105 ; in time of Henry 
I., 198-201; in thirteenth cen- 
tury, 318-321 ; for suppression 
of, see Cromwell, Thomas, also 
reign of Edward VI. 

Monk, George, duke of Albemarle, 
711, 715, 719, 732, 744, 746. 

Monmouth, James, duke of, wins 
Bothwell Brigg, 775 ; the Black 
Box, 776; connection with Rye 
House Plot, 779; rebellion of, 
784; death, 785. 

Monopolies, attacked by parliament 
of Elizabeth, 613, 614; by par- 
liaments of James I., 639; 
abuses of under Charles I. , 655. 

Mons Graupius, battle of, 10. 

Montague, Edward, Lord Kimbol- 
ton, earl of Manchester, parlia- 
mentary general, 683 ; at 
Winceby, 687; Marston Moor, 



1090 



IJSTDEX 



689 ; at Newbury, 692 ; removed 
from command, 693. 
Charles, minister of William III. , 
his administration of the treas- 
ury, 822, 823; member of Junto, 
826; the resolutions of, 828; 
attacked by Tories, 831. 
Admiral, earl of Sandwich, 746. 
John, earl of Sandwich, attacks 

Wilkes, 923. 
Thomas, earl of Salisbiuy, 451 ; 
slain at Orleans, 452. 

Montcalm, French governor in 
America, 900, 904, 907. 

Montfort, Simon de, earl of Leices- 
ter, 284, 285; leads barons in 
war with Henry II., 287; at 
Lewes, 289; his parliament, 
290; death of, 291-293. 
John de, claimant to duchy of 
Brittany, 361 ; supported by 
Edward III., 383. 

Montrose, earl of, supports Charles 
I., 689, 690, 694, 695. 

Moore, Sir John, in Peninsular 
War, 967. 

Morcar, 138, 146, 150. 

More, Sir Thomas, chancellor of 
Henry VIII., 535; persecutes 
Protestants, 538 ; refuses to sup- 
port Henry VIII., in revolt from 
the chui'ch, 540; the "Utopia," 
542; death, 543. 

Mortimer, Edmund, earl of March, 
390. 
Edmund, captured by Glendower, 

433, 434. 
Eoger, lord of Wigmore, 345 ; plots 
with Isabella against Edward 
II., 346, 347; tyranny of, 350- 
353 ; death of, 352. 

Mortimer's Cross, battle of, 472. 

Mortmain, statute of, 420. 

Morton, John, bishop of Ely, mem- 
ber of council of Edward IV. , 
489; conspires against Richard 
III., 490, 491; cardinal, 532. 

Moscow, burning of, 971, 972. 

Mountjoy, see Blount. 

Mouseiiold Hill, battle of, 566. 

Mowbray, Thomas, earl of Notting- 
ham, duke of Norfolk, one of 
the Lords Appellant, 418, 421 ; 
exiled by Richard II., 423. 

Muggletonians, the, 706. 



Municipal Bill, the Irish, 1001. 
Muscovy Company, the, 808. 
Mutiny Act, the, 813. 

Namur, taken by William III., 825. 

Nana Sahib, part in Indian Mutiny, 
1027, 1029, 1031. 

Nantes, Edict of, 617; revoked, 686. 

Napoleon I., see Bonaparte. 
III., Louis, president of Second 
French Republic, 1017 ; emperor 
of the French, 1020; part in 
Crimean war, 1022; the Orsini 
affair, 1032 ; interferes in Italy, 
1033. 

Napoleonic wars, relation of to wars 
of eighteenth century, 975. 

Naseby, battle of, 693. 

Natal, colonization of, 1012. 

Navarino, battle of, 985. 

Navigation Acts, the, 717, 756, 845, 
1019. 

Nechtansmere, battle of, 49. 

Nelson, admiral, 956, 958, 961, 962. 

Neolithic men, the, 3, 4. 

Netherlands, see under Flanders 
atid Burgundy; relations to 
Elizabeth, 600-602, 600,607; re- 
lations to the commonwealth, 
717-719, 730; to Charles II., 756, 
761-766; to James II., 783, 794, 
795 ; for alliance with England, 
see the several succession wars 
of the eighteenth century; 
Spanish, ceded to Austria, 855 ; 
overrun by French, 950, 952, 
954; raised to a kingdom, 974. 

Neville. Anne, wife of Richard III., 
488. 
Richard, earl of Salisbury, ally of 
Richard of York, 465, 466-470; 
execvited, 471. 
Richard, earl of Warwick, the 
"king inaker, " 465, 466; wins 
St. Albans, 467; Northampton, 
470; defeated at second battle 
of St. Albans, 472; conquers 
Percy strongholds, 477; quarrel 
with Edward IV., 478; turns 
against Edward IV., 479-482, 
death at Barnet, 483. 

Neville's Cross, battle of, 368. 

Newburn, battle of, 667. 

Newbury, battle of, first, 687; the 
second, 692. 



INDEX 



1091 



Newcastle, see Pelham. 

New England, early settlements in 
661, 662. 

New Model, the, organized, 693; at 
Naseby, 693, 694 ; refuses to dis- 
band, 698, 699 ; takes possession 
of London, 700 ; supports Crom- 
well, 720-738 ; disbands, 748. 
the, ordinance, 692. 

New Orleans, the battle of, 971. 

New Style, adopted by English, 
the, 895. 

New York, settled by Dutch as New 
Amsterdam, 809 ; taken by Eng- 
lish and named New York, 756. 

Newtown Butler, battle of, 816. 

Nimwegen, Treaty of, 767. 

Niinian, Celtic missionary, 14. 

Nonconformists, see under Sepa- 
ratists, Puritans, Hampton 
Court Conference, Lavid, Clar- 
endon Code, Dissenters, In- 
dulgence, and Occasional Con- 
formity. 

Nonjurors, the, 814. 

Nouresistance Bill, the, 768. 

Norfolk, see Howard, Mowbray, and 
Bigod. 

Norman conquest of England, see 
William I. 

Normandy, relations to Ethelred, 
the Redeless, 109, 110, 114; to 
Edward the Confessor, 126, 131, 
132; wars of William H. in, 184; 
reunion with England, 187, 188; 
wars of Henry I., 191, 192; lost 
by John, 246, 247; won by 
Henry V., 447, 448; regained 
by Charles VII., 459, 460, 464. 

North, Frederick, Lord North, min- 
ister of George III., 928, 929; 
the Regulating Act, 930; at- 
tempt to conciliate American 
colonies, 933 ; grants legislative 
independence to Ireland, 939; 
resigns, 940; member of the 
coalition ministry, 942. 

Northallerton, battle of, 204. 

Northampton, assize of, the, 326. 

Northmen, the, 58, 59, see also 
Danes. 

Northumberland, earls of, see Percy. 

Northumbrian Confederacy, 23 ; 
first kingdom of, 36 ; conversion 
of, 37; influence of monks in, 



38; recovery of, 40; second re- 
covery of, 42 ; decline of, 50. 

Northumbrian risings against Wil- 
liam I, 161-165. 

NottinghajTi, see Finch and Mow- 
bray. 

Nova Scotia, ceded to England, 
855; annexed to Canada, 1043. 

Oates, Titus, plot, the, 769, 782. 

Occasional Conformity Bill, 842; 
repealed, 880. 

Ockley, battle of, 60. 

O'Connell, Daniel, enters parlia- 
ment, 989, 990 ; opposes Coercion 
Act, 995; popular meetings in 
Ireland, 1010, 1011; death, 1011. 

Oda, archbishop of Canterbury, 95, 
98, divorces Edwy, 99. 

Odo, half brother of William I., 
regent, 154 ; quarrels with Wil- 
liam I., 183; driven out by 
William II., 184. 

Offa, king of Mercia, 53. 

Offa's dyke, 53. 

Oldcastle, John, Lord Cobhani, 
burned as heretic, 441. 

O'Neill, earl of Tyrone, rising of, 
614. 

Orangemen, organization of the, 
955. 

Ordainers, Lords, 336. 

Ordeal, the, 90; abolition of, 221. 

Orders in council, the first, 965 ; the 
second, 966. 

Ordinary council, the, 194. 

Orleans, siege of, 452, 454. 

Ormond, see Butler. 

Orsini, the Don, affair, 1082. 

Osborne, Sir Thomas, earl of Danby, 
766; his "system of influence, " 
767; supports Nouresistance 
Bill, 768; relations to Louis 
XIV., 770; fall of, 770, 771; re- 
lease of from Tower, 780; in- 
trigues against James II., 795; 
minister of William III., 821. 

Oswald, 41. 

Oswy, 42-45. 

Otford, battle of, 116. 

Otterburn, battle of, 432. 

Oxford, Provisions of, 282, 283. 
earl of, see Harley and, Vere. 
the University of, 320, 321, 324, 
523, 562 and note, 563, 885, 1014. 



1092 



INDEX 



Paleolithic men, in Bi-itain, 3. 
Pallium, bishop's, the, 35. 
Palmerston, Lord, see Temple. 
Pandulf , papal legate to king John, 

263, 269. 
Papal authority, attacked by Wyc- 
lif , 395 ; universally recognized, 
528; claims over England, 529; 
revolt of England from, 530 and 
following ; see also under Wil- 
liam I., Henry II., John, Henry 
III. 
Paris, Treaties of, 909, 940, 1025. 
Parish Councils Bill, 1063. 
Parker, Matthew, archbishop of 

Canterbury, 589, 602. 
Parliament, the Addled, 636. 

Barebones, see Nominated Parlia- 
ment. 

of Bats, the, 455. 

the Cavalier, 749 ; persecutions of 
dissenters, 751 ; becomes the 
Pensionary, 759. 

the convention, 745; acts of , 747. 

the second convention, 801, 803, 
821. 

the Good, 393, 403, 404. 

the Long, 669; reforms of, 672; 
revolutionary drift of, 673, 692 ; 
see also Rump, the. 

the Mad, 281. 

the Model, 309. 

Montfort's, 290. 

the Nominated, 725-727. 

the Pensionary, 759. 

the Reform, 534, 536, 538. 

the Short, 660. 

the Wonderful, 419. 

fii'st appearance of name, 281 ; 
growth of, increase in activity 
and authority, 397; the right 
to fix succession, 430; develop- 
ment under Henry V., 441-443; 
parliaments of house of Lan- 
caster, 474-476 ; Ehzabeth's deal- 
ings with, 590 ; recovers power 
of impeachment, 639; quarrels 
with James I. , 628 ; early strife 
of Charles I. with, 643; de- 
thrones and executes Charles 
I. , 669-704 ; impoi'tant principles 
arising from Danby's case, 771 ; 
secures control of crown grants, 
832; significance of Whig rev- 
olution in growth of power of, 



863, 864; the Wilkes case, 923; 
reform of, agitated, 928; de- 
bates published, 930; reform 
agitation renewed, 978, 988; 
the Reform Bill of 1832, 991- 
994; the second Reform Bill, 
1041, 1042; the third Reform 
Bill, 1058, 1059; as constituted 
in 1901, 1059 ; see also Witenage- 
mot. Council, Magnum Conci- 
lium, and Commons. 

Parnell, Charles Stewart, Home 
Rule leader, 1054, 1062. 

Parr, Catharine, 553. 

Parsons, Robert, Jesuit agent, 604. 

Partitions, Spanish, treaties, 831, 
832. 

Patay, battle of, 455. 

Paterson, William, devises plan of 
Bank of England, 823; origin- 
ates scheme of Darien com- 
pany, 846. 

Patrick, St., Irish missionary, 14. 

Patriots, the, 881, 885. 

Paul, czar of Russia, ally of Bona- 
IJarte, 957 ; assassination of, 959. 

Paulinus, first archbishop of ^ork, 
37, 38- 

Peasant Revolt, the, 406-410. 

Pedro the Cruel, of Castile, 383; 
restored by Black Prince, 384, 
killed by Henry of Trastamara, 
384. 

Peel, Sir Robert, home secretary, 
980; opposes Catholic emanci- 
pation, 986; compromises on 
Test Act, 988 ; first ministry of, 
998; second ministry of, 1008; 
position of, 1009; restores in- 
come tax, 1010; dealings with 
Ireland, 1010, 1011 ; repeals Corn 
Laws, 1015; resigns, 1016; the 
Arms Act, 1016, 1017; death of , 
1021. 

Pelham, Henry, minister of George 
II., 891; his war policy, 891, 
894: home policy, 895; opposes 
Calendar Bill, 895; death, 896. 
Thomas, duke of Newcastle, min- 
ister of George II., 896; fall of, 
901 ; his corrupt methods, 901, 
902; joins with the elder Pitt, 
901 ; end of career, 909. 

Pembroke, see Marshal, Valence, 
and Clare. 



INDEX 



1093 



Penal Code, 817. 

Penda, 39-42. 

Peninsular War, 967. 

Perceval, Spencer, prime minister, 
970. 

Percy, Henry, earl of Northumber- 
land, rising of against Henry 
IV., 435. 
Henry, 'Hotspur," 396, 433; re- 
volt of, 434; slain at Shrews- 
bury, 435. 
Thomas, earl of Worcester, slain 
at Shrewsbury, 435. 

Perrers, Alice, intrigues against 
Edward III., 389, 393, 394. 

Persian war, the, 1026. 

Perth, the Articles of, 664. 

Pesaro, Cape, battle of, 871. 

Peter the Great, of Russia, 871, 909. 

Peter's Pence, 181, 536. 

Peterloo, massacre of, 978, 979. 

Petition and Advice, the, 736, 737. 

Petition of Right, the, 618, 649. 

Petitioners and Abhorrers, early 
names of Whigs and Tories, 
773. 

Petty, William, earl of Shelburne, 
minister of George III., 940, 
941. 

Philip I. of France, relations with 
William I., 136. 
II., of France, aids Richard I. 
against Henry II., 228; in the 
third crusade, 233, 234; plots 
with John against Richard, 235 ; 
wars with Richard I., 240, 
241. 
IV. of France, war with Edward 

I., 311, 326. 
VI. of France, aids Scotland 
against England, 354 ; war with 
Edward III., 357-369; death, 
376. 
II., of Spain, marries Maiy of 
England, 579; proposes mar- 
riage with Elizabeth, 592; raises 
Irish against Elizabeth, 603; 
war with England, 606-612; 
death, 612, 617. 

Philiphaugh, battle of, 694, 695. 

Philippa of Hainault, queen of Ed- 
ward III., 389. 

Phoenix Park mvirder, the, 1054. 

Picquigny, Treaty of, 483. 

Plots, the ancient, 15, 16. 



Pilgrimage of Grace, the, 545. 

Pilgrims, see Separatists. 

Pilnitz, convention of, 951. 

Pinkie Cleugh, battle of, 561. 

Pitt, William, earl of Chatham, 
attacks Carteret, 882, 896 ; first 
ministry, 901, 908; successful 
policy of, 905, 906 ; second min- 
istry, 924, 929 ; sympathy with 
American colonists, 935, 938; 
death of, 943. 
William, j)rime minister, 944; 
strength of, 944; peaceful na- 
ture of early part of adminis- 
tration, 945, 946; reforms of, 
946-949; foreign pohcy of, 950; 
early attitude toward French 
Revolution, 951, 956; organizes 
coalition against France, 956, 
957 ; resignation of, 958 ; second 
ministry of, 961; third coali- 
tion, 962; death, 962, 963. 

Pius V. , bull of, against Elizabeth, 
600. 

Plague, the Great, of 1665, 756. 

Plassey, battle of, 905. 

Poitiers, battle of, 378. 

Pole, Henry, Lord Montague, in- 
trigue of, 545, 546. 
John de la, earl of Lincoln, revolt 
of, against Henry VII., 302; 
slain at Stoke, 302. 
Michael de la, earl of Suffolk, 
minister of Richard II., 416; 
dismissed, 418. 
Reginald, papal legate, 545; at- 
tainted by Henry VIII., 546; 
returns to England under Mary, 
577, 580; archbishop of Ca,nter- 
bury, 582; death of, 585. 
William de la, earl of Suffolk, 
458, 459; impeached and mur- 
dered, 461. 

Polish succession, war of the, 883. 

Poor Law, the first, 570; amend- 
ment act, 996. 

Porteous riots, the, 882. 

Portland, see Bentinck. 

Postal reform, 1005, 1006. 

Poyning's Acts, the, 505. 

Pra3munire, Statute of, 390, 398, 
420, 526. 

Prayer Book of Edward VI., the 
first, 564; the second, 570; re- 
pealed, 576. 



1094 



INDEX 



Presbyterians, see under Reforma- 
tion in Scotland, Puritans, Civil 
Wars, the, Long Parliament, 
Restoration, Clarendon Code, 
Dissenters. 

Presentment of Engiishry, 160. 

Press, freedom of, secured, 824. 

Pressbvirg, Treaty of, 962. 

Preston, battle of, 703. 

Preston Pans, battle of, 893. 

Pretender, see Stuart. 

Pride's purge, 703. 

Primrose, Archibald Philip, earl of 
Rosebery, successor of Glad- 
stone, 1064. 

Printing in England, early, 498, 

Prison reform, see Howard. 

Protection for Life and Property 
Act, 1054. 

Provisors, Statute of, 390, 398, 420. 

Prynne, William, before Court of 
Star Chamber, 658, 659. 

Punjab, conquest of, 1013. 

Puritanism, growth of, 602. 

Puritans, the, 564, 576, 597, 602, 612, 
624-627, 650, 657, 661, 662, 666, 
674, 675; see also Separatists, 
Nonconformists, and Dissent- 
ers. 

Pym, John, parliamentary leader, 
640, 647, 666, 670, 671, 688. 

Pyrenees, Treaty of the, 741. 

Pythias, voyage of, 6, 7. 

Quakers, persecution of, 752. 
Quebec, capture of, 907. 
Queen Anne's bounty, 842. 

war, 897. 
Quia Emptores, the statute of, 301. 
Quiberon Bay, battle of, 907. 

Radcot Bridge, battle of, 418. 

Raedwald, king of East Anglia, 34, 
36. 

Raleigh, Sir Walter, 613, 616; ad- 
vocates war with Spain, 624; 
imprisoned, 626; Soutli Ameri- 
can expedition of, 637; death 
of, 638. 

Rami Hies, battle of, 844. 

Ranters, the, 706. 

Rapparees, the, 754. 

Reading, battle of, 63. 

Recissory Act, the, 754. 

Recoinage Act, the, 827. 



Recusants, 564, 591, 605. 

Reform Bills, the, first, 994 ; the sec- 
ond, 1041, 1042; the third, 1058. 

Reformation, the, in England, in- 
troduction of, 528-547 ; progress 
of, 549-570; Catholic reaction, 
571-585; established, 587-605. 
the, in Scotland, 592. 

Regulating Act, the, 930. 

Relief, 117. 

Relief Act, the, 931. 

Religiosis, the. Statute de, 301. 

Remonstrance, the Grand, 676. 

Restoration, the Stuart, 745 ; in Ire- 
land, 753 ; in Scotland, 754. 

Resumption Bill, the, 832. 

Retford, battle of, 36. 

Revenues of the crown under Eliza- 
beth, 631. 

Revocation, the Act of, 664. 

Rich, Edmund, archbishop of Can- 
terbury, 275, 278. 

Richard I., conspii'es against Henry 
II., 225, 228; accession of, 230; 
in the third crusade, 231, 234; 
character of, 231 ; imprisonment 
and ransom of, 235, 236; reign 
of, 236-240; death of , 231. 
II., troublous reign of, 404-425; in 
the Peasant Revolt, 409 ; defies 
parliament, 418; assumes the 
government, 419; second mar- 
riage of, 420; his Irish cam- 
paign, 424 ; is deposed, 425 ; im- 
prisoned, 431 ; death of, 432. 
III. , as duke of Gloucester, 
schemes to secure the succes- 
sion, 488; succeeds, 489, 490; 
his reign, 490, 491 ; slain at Bos- 
worth, 492. 

Richmond, see Henry VII. of Eng- 
land. 

Ridley, Nicholas, bishop of Rochesr 
ter, 564; death, 582, 583. 

Ridolfi plot, the, 601. 

Right, petition of, 648-650. 

Rights, Bill of, 813. 
claim of, 818. 
declaration of, 802, 813. 

Rivers, see Woodville. 

Rizzio, David, murder of, 598. 

Robert of Jumieges, archbishop of 
Canterbury, 128, 129, 132. 
of Normandy, eldest son of Con- 
queror, 182, 183; loses Nor- 



INDEX 



1095 



mandy, 107; quarrels with 
Henry I., 190> 191; death, 191. 

Eobert I. , king of Scotland, corona- 
tion, 331 ; wars with Edward I. , 
327-332; with Edward II., 338, 
339; secures independence of 
Scotland, 436. 
III., of Scotland, 436. 

Roberts, general, "Bobs," 1056. 

Robinson, Fi'ederick, viscount Gode- 
rich, chancellor of the ex- 
chequer, 981; prime minister, 
987 ; member of Grey ministry, 
991. 

Rochelle, La, battle of, 387; Buck- 
ingham's expedition to, 646. 

Roches, Peter des, bishop of Win- 
chester, justiciar of John, 257; 
favorite of Henry III., 267, 271, 
272, 274; dismissed from coun- 
cil, 275. 

Rockingham, marquis of, see Went- 
worth. 

Roger, the Poor, bishop of Salisbury, 
193; quarrel with Stephen, 205. 

Roman walls, the, in Britain, 11. 

Root and Branch Bill, 674, 675. 

Rosebery, see Primrose. 

Roses, the wars of, 466-492. 

Rossbach, battle of, 904. 

Rotten boroughs, disfranchisement 
of, see Reform' Bills. 

Rowton Heath, battle of, 695. 

Royal African Company, 809. 

Royal Marriage Act, the, 930. 

"Rule Brittania," origin of song, 
878, 888. 

Rump, the, 704; ignores the agree- 
ment of the people, 707 ; unpop- 
ularity of, 719; expelled by 
Cromwell, 720, 721; restored, 
740; second expulsion and res- 
toration, 743. 

Rupert, prince, 682, 684, 685, 686, 
688, 689, 690, 695, 711, 716, 756. 

Rural life in England in four- 
teenth century, 372, 373. 

Russell, admiral Edward, wins La 
Hogue, 820. 
John, earl, attacks Test and Cor- 
poration acts, 988; member of 
Grey ministry, 991; prime min- 
istei", 1016; colonial policy of, 
1018; factory reforms, 1019; 
fall of, 1020, 1021. 



Russell, Lord William, Whig leader, 

executed, 779. 
Rye House Plot, the, 779. 
Ryswick, peace of, 829. 

Sac and Soc, 122, 176. 

Sacherevell's case, 852. 

Saint Albans, battle of, 467; sec- 
ond battle of, 472. 
Brice's Day, massacre of, 110. 

Saladin tithe, the, 227, 228. 

Salisbury, see Cecil, Montague, 
Neville. 
William Longsword, earl of, 254, 
258, 264. 

Sancroft, William, archbishop of 
Canterbury, of "the seven 
bishops," 792; deposed as non- 
juror, 814. 

Sandwich, see Montague. 

Sanquhair Declaration, the, 775. 

San Stefano, Treaty of, 1051. 

Saratoga, battle of, 938. 

Sautre, William, first heretic burnt 
in England, 440. 

Saville, George, marquis of Hali- 
fax, 773 ; defeats the Exclusion 
Bill, 777 ; supports William III. , 
777. 

Saxons, eaidy conquests of, 15-22. 

Schism, the Great, 413. 

Scotland, ancient people of, 15, 
16; see also Caledonians, and 
Picts; relations of Norman 
and Angevin kings to, see un- 
der contemporary S ao ttisJi 
Mngs; the Reformation in, see 
Elizabeth ; tlie Revolution in, see 
under names of Stuart kings; 
union with England, 845, 846; 
free church movement in, 1014. 

Scrope, Richard le, archbishop of 
York, plots against Henry IV., 
435. 

Scutage, the, 214. 

Sebastopol, siege of, 1023, 1024. 

Secretaries of state, the, 868. 

Security, Bill of, the, 847. 

Sedgemoor, battle of, 784. 

Self-denying Ordinance, the, 692. 

Senlac, see Hastings. 

Separatists, the, 597; persecutions 
of, 612 ; the settlement at New 
Plymouth, 661. 

Sepoy mutiny, see Indian mutiny. 



1096 



INDEX 



Septennial Act, the, 869. 

Settlement, Act of, the, 833. 

Seven bishops, the trial of, 793, 794. 

Seven years' war, the, begun, 899, 900. 

Seymour, Jane, wife of Henry 
VIII., 550. 
Edward, duke of Somerset, 560; 
lord protector, 560; his prot- 
estantism, 561-564; invasion of 
Scotland, 561 ; fall and execu- 
tion of, 567, 569. 
Seymour, Thomas, intrigiies of, 
565. 

Shaftesbury, see Cooper. 

Shakespeare, William, 016, 617. 

Shelburne, see Petty. 

Sheriff, the, 69. 

Sheriffmuir, battle of, 869. 

Sheriffs, Inquest of, 221, 223. 

Ship money, levies of, 655, 656; 
Hampden's case, 657 ; declared 
illegal by Long Parliament, 672. 

Shire, origin of, 69, 70. 

Shrewsbury, battle of, 434. 

Sidmouth, see Addington. 

Sidney, Algernon, Whig leader, 779. 
Sir Philip, 607, 617. 

Simnel, Lambert, the pretender, 501. 

Six Acts, the, 979. 

Six Articles, the, 549, 550. 

Slavery, 616; the assiento, 855, 
872, 883; slave trade, society 
for abolition of , 950; Mansfield's 
decision, 949, 950; slave trade 
abolished in colonies, 966- the 
Emancipation Act, 996. 

Sluys, battle of, 359, 360. 

Smith, Adam, author of "Wealth of 
Nations," influence of, 918. 
John, missionary to negroes of 
Jamaica, 987. 

Soho, iron works, established, 914. 

Solemn League and Covenant, the, 
688. 

Solferino, battle of, 1033. 

Somerset, see Beaufort, Seymour, 
and Carr. 

Soudan, the, see Mahdi. 

South Sea Company, (the South 
Sea Bubble), 872-874. 

Spain, see under different Spanish 
kings, Armada, Utrecht. 

Spanish succession, the war of the, 
causes of, 832, 835 ; for progress 
of see under Churchill. 



"Spectator," the, 860. 

Snencer, John Charles, viscount 
Althorp, 996, 1019. 
Henry de, bishop of Norwich, 

crusade of, 414. 
Robert, earl of Sunderland, coun- 
cillor of Charles IL, 773; of 
James II., 788. 
Charles, earl of Sunderland, 853, 
868, 869 ; involved in South Sea 
Bubble, 874. 

Spenser, Edmund, the poet, 617, 
634. 

Spurs, battle of the, 515. 

St. George's Fields, massacre of, 
927. 

St. John, Henry, viscount Boling- 
broke, 842, 853, 856, 863, 868, 
872, 878, 881. 

St. Mahe, battle of, 326. 

Stadholderate, the, restored, 764. 

Stafford, Edward, duke of Buck- 
ingham, lineage of, 523 ; execu- 
tion of, 524. 
Henry duke of, supports Richard 
III., 484; revolt and death, 490. 

Stamford Bridge, battle of, 189, 140. 

Stam.p Act, the, 923; repealed, 925. 

Standard, battle of the, 204. 

Stanhope, James, earl, minister of 
George I. , 869 ; his foreign pol- 
icy, 870-872 ; fall of ministry of, 
873; death, 874. 
Philip Dormer, earl of Chester- 
field, 895. 

Stanley, Edward, earl of Derb>y, 
secretary for Ireland, 995 ; colo- 
nial secretary, abolishes slave 
trade, 996; first ministry of, 
1021 ; second ministry of, 1032, 
1033; third ministry of, 1040, 
1042. 

Star Chamber, court of, 502 ; abuses 
of, under Charles I., 658; abol- 
ished by Long Parliament, 672. 

Stephen, king of England, 202, 203; 
civil war begun, 204; breaks 
with the church, 205; Walling- 
ford, 210; death, 211. 

Stephenson, George, inventor of 
locomotive, 1002. 

Stewart, Robert, viscount Castle- 
reagh, member of Portland 
ministry, 966; of Liverpool 
ministry, 970; refused to enter 



IKDEX 



1097 



Holy Alliance, 982; death of, 
981. 

Stigand, archbishop of Canterbury, 
133, 133, 147, 149, 154, 179. 

Stoke, battle of, 502. 

Stonehenge, ruins of, 6. 

Strafford, see Wentworth. 

Strongbow, see Clare. 

Stuart, see under names of sover- 
eigns of house. 
John, earl of Bute, minister of 

George III., 908, 921. 
Murdock, earl of Fyfe, 413. 

Subinfeudation, 175. 

Subsidy, origin of, 631, note. 

Succession, the war of the English, 
820, 829, 830. 

Suez canal, comes under British 
control, 1056. 

Suffolk, see Pole and Grey. 

Sunderland, see Spencer. 

Supremacy, Act of, 541, 542, 590. 

Surajah Dowlah, nawab of Bengal, 
besieges Calcutta, 900; over- 
throw by Clive, 904, 905. 

Surrey, see Howard. 

Suttee, abolished in India, 1013. 

Sweyn Forkbeard, raid of, 111, 113, 
114. 
son of earl Godwin, 127. 

Tables, the Scottish. 664. 

Talavera, battle of, 968. 

Talbot, Richard, earl of Tyrcon- 
nel. 788, 815. 

Talents , the ministry of All the, 
963. 

Tallage, 177. 

Taniwortli Manifesto, the, 977. 

"Tatler," the, established, 860. 

Tel-el-Kebir, battle of, 1057. 

Temple, Henry, viscount Palmer- 
ston, secretary of war, 981, 988; 
Tory member of Grey ministry, 
991 ; foreign secretary in Mel- 
bourne ministry, 1003; policy 
of, 1004; supports opium war, 
1005 ; foreign secretary in Rus- 
sell ministry, 1016, 1020, 1021; 
in Aberdeen ministry, 1022; 
prime minister, 1024; second 
Chinese war, 1026, 1031; in 
Orsini affair, 1032; second min- 
istry of, 1033; attitude toward 
American civil war, 1034; the 



Alabama, 1035 ; attempted 
interference in struggle for Ger- 
man unity, 1036; death, 1036. 

Temple, "William, scheme for recon- 
struction of royal council, 771. 

Ten Articles, the, 548. 

Tenants in capite, 175. 

Tenchebray, battle of, 191. 

Tenure, socage, 173. 
militax'y, 174. 

Test Act, the, 765; attacked by 
James II., 788. 

Teutonic Britain, institutions, 27; 
rival confederacies, 32; Chris- 
tianity in, 42. 

Teutons, advance of the, 24-27 ; cus- 
toms of, 30, 31. 

Tewksbury, battle of, 484. 

Thames, the, 70, 88, 174. 

Theodore, archbishop of Canter- 
bury, 44-48. 

Thirty-nine Articles, the, 596, 814. 

Thirty j^ears' war, outbreak of, 638 ; 
relation of England to, see bin- 
der James I. 

Thugs, the, abolished in India, 1013. 

Thurkill, the Dane, 112, 113. 

Tilsit, Treaty of, 964. 

Tithe Bill, the Irish, 1001. 

Tithe war, the Irish, 995. 

Torres Vedras, the lines of, 969. 

Tory pai"ty, origin of name, 773; 
strength under James II., 786; 
intrigues under William III., 
see under Jacobites ; disruption 
of the ancient, 863; birth of 
the Hanoverian or new, 878; 
first period of rule, 911-940; 
second period of rule, 941-945; 
reforms of, 978; disruption of, 
1014, 1016; replaced by Con- 
servative party, 1038. 

Tostig, son of Godwin, 133, 137-139. 

Toulouse, Henry II. 's war of, 214. 

Tower, the, 30, 242, 243; see also 
city. 

Townsliend, Charles, lord, minis- 
ter of George I., 868, 869; asso- 
ciated with Walpole, 870-874; 
quarrel with Walpole, 877; re- 
tires, 878. 

Towton, battle of, 476. 

Tractarian movement, the, 1014. 

Trafalgar, battle of, 961, 962. 

Trailbaston, courts of, 353. 



1098 



IKDEX 



Transvaal, annexation of the, 1052. 
Trastaniara, Henry of, 383, 384. 
Treasons Act, the, 827. 
Trent Affair, the, 1084. 
Trent, the council of, 597. 
Triennial Acts, 672, 749, 824. 
Triers, committee of, 731. 
Trinoda necessitas, the, 170. 
Triple Alliance, the, 761. 
Tromp, von, Dutch admiral, 718, 

730. 
Troyes, Treaty of, 448. 
"True Born Englishmen," the, of 

Defoe, 860. 
Tudor policy, the, 500. 
House of, see under names of 

sovereigns of. 
system, the, 620. 
Tulchan bishops, the, 663. 
Tyler, Walter, connected with 

Peasant Revolt, 408, 409. 
Tyndale, William, translator of 

scrijitures, 537, 549. 
Tyrconnel, see Talbot. 

Uhtred, earl of Northumbria, 115. 

Ulfcytel, Norman, bishop of Dur- 
ham, 111, 112. 

Ulster, Plantation of, the, 633. 

Undertakers, the, 712. 

Uniformity, the Acts of, 564, 576, 
590. 

Union Jack, first appearance of, 849. 
the, of England and Scotland, 
845-849. 

United Irishmen, the society of, 
955. 

United States of America, second 
war with Great Britain, 970, 
972; boundary questions, 1012; 
Caroline affair, 1000; Palmers- 
ton ministry and the civil war, 
1034. 

Urban V., demands payment of 
tribute from Edward III. , 390. 
VI. , see schism. 

Uses, Statute of, 544. 

Ushant, battle of, 952. 

Utrecht, Treaties of, 854, 855, 883. 

Valence, Aymer de, earl of Pem- 
broke, 331. 

Van Arteveldt, see Arteveldt. 

Vane, Sir Henry, the yovmger, 670, 
688, 718, 724, 747, 749. 



Vassal, the, 175. 

Vere, Robert de, earl of Oxford, 
marquis of Dublin, duke of 
Ireland, 416-419. 

Verneiiil, battle of, 451. 

Versailles, Treaty of, 940. 

Victoria, accession of, 999 ; marries 
Prince Albert, 1006; epochs of 
reign, 1009; death of, influence 
of, 1067. 

Vienna, congress, 972, 981. 
Treaties of, 877, 879, 883, 968. 

Vikings, see Danes and Northmen, 

Villain, the, 173; emancipation of, 
410 ; see also Peasant Revolt. 

Villiers, George, duke of Bucking- 
ham, minister of James II. , 63.5, 
641, 645, 646; assassination of, 
652. 
George, duke of Buckingham, 

member of Cabal, 731, 766. 
Charles, prominent in attack upon 
Corn Laws, 1003. 

Vimiero, battle of, 967. 

Vincent, battle of St., 954. 

Vinegar Hill, battle of, 955. 

Walcheren, Chatham's expedition 
to, 968. 

Wagram, battle of, 968. 

Wakefield, battle of, 471. 

Wales, Statute of, 299. 
first prince of, 299. 
not conquered by Saxons, 24; 
wars with Northumbria, 23, 36, 
87 ; vassal to Edward the Elder, 
82 ; of Athelstan, 83 ; princes of, 
in alliance with Montfort, 288; 
conquered and organized by Ed- 
ward I., 298, 299; wars with 
Henry IV. , 433,486 ; reorganized 
by Henry VIII., 553. 

Wallace, William, rising of, 328; 
loses Falkirk, 329 ; death of, 330. 

Waller, Sir William, pai'liamentary 
general, 683-685, 690. 

Wallingford, peace of, 210, 211. 

Walpole, Sir Robert, minister of 
George I., 868, 869; attacks for- 
eign policy of government, 870; 
in Townshend's second minis- 
try, 874; quarrels with Town- 
shend, 875; "first prime minis- 
ter of England," 879; favors 
toleration, 880 ; the Excise Bill, 



INDEX 



1099 



880; his policy of peace, 882, 
883 ; war with Spain, 883 ; serv- 
ice to England, 884. 

Walsingham, minister of Eliza- 
beth, 607. 

Walter of Coutances, archbishop of 
Rovien, justiciar of Richard I., 
238; lays interdict on Nor- 
mandy, 241. 

Walter, Hubert, archbishop of Can- 
terbury, 284, 237; justiciar of 
Richard I., 288-240; death of, 
250. 

Waltheof, earl of Northumberland, 
rebellion of, 162, 168 ; death of, 
166. 

Walworth, William, mayor ofc Lon- 
don, auditor of popular levy, 
404; in Peasant Revolt, 406, 407. 

Wandewash, battle of, 907. 

Warbeck, Perkin, pretender, 504- 
507. 

Wardship, 177. 

Warenne, John, wins Dunbar, 327; 
regent of Scotland, 327 ; beaten 
at Cambuskenneth, 828. 

Warwick, see Beauchamp, Neville, 
and Dudley. 

Washington, George, commander 
of colonial armies, 987 ; at York- 
town, 989. 

Waterloo, battle of, 973; effect on 
England, 976. 

Watt, James, improves steam en- 
gine, 913, 914. 

Wedgewood, Josiah, potter, 914. 

Wedmore, Treaty of, 67. 

Wellesley, Arthur, duke of Welling- 
ton, in Indi^ 961 ; in Penin- 
sular war, %7 - 969 ; invades 
France, 972; wins Waterloo, 
973, 974; prime minister, 987; 
opposes Catholic emancipation, 
987, 988; accepts, 990; fall of 
ministry, 990, 991 ; attemjits to 
form a second ministry, 993, 
death, 1021. 
Richard, lord Mornington, in In- 
dia, 961. 

Wentworth, Charles Watson, mar- 
quis of Rockingham, minister 
of George III.. 924; the Declar- 
atory Act, 925 ; second ministiy 
and death, 940. 

Wergeld, 28. 



Wesley, Charles, associated with 
John, in Methodist movement, 
885. 
John, leader in i-eligious reforms, 
885; founds Methodist church, 
886; influence of Methodist 
movement, 887. 

Wessex, early conquests of West 
Saxons, 22, 23, 83 ; organization 
of kingdom by Ine. 50, 51 ; su- 
preme under Egbert, 53-56. 

Westminster Abbey, 148. 
Confession, the, 698. 
Convention of, 898, 899. 
Provisions of, 286. 
Thomas, earl of Strafford, 640: 
attacks the abuses of the crown, 
647; joins king's party, 651; 
lord deputy of Ireland, 660; 
added to the council, 666; im- 
peachment of, 670, 671 ; death, 
672. 

Wharton, Whig leader, member of 
Junto, 826, 831, 858. 

Whig revolution, 782-804; nature 
of, 808, 804. 
party, rise of, origin of name, 
773 ; William and Anne forced 
to sui^port, 806; first ministry, 
825; character of rule of, 865; 
constitutional significance of 
triumph, 868, 864 ; split in party, 
869; reforms of, 978; later 
schism of party, 1088; see also 
under Shaftesbury, Exclusion 
Bill, Russell, Somers, Mon- 
tague, Wharton, Junto, Marl- 
borough, Townshend, W a 1- 
pole, Newcastle, Rockingham, 
Shelburne, Grey, Melbourne. 

Whitby, Synod of, 44. 

White ship, sinking of the, 196. 

Whitefield, George, leader in reli- 
gious reform, 885, 886 ; supports 
Calvinistic wing of Methodist 
movement, 886. 

Wihtwara, settle in Isle of Wight, 
see Jutes. 

Wilberforce, see slavery. 

Wilfred, bishop of York, 48, 48. 

Wilkes, John, 921, 922, 923, 926-931. 

William I., the Conqueror, parent- 
age of, 130 ; character and early 
training, 180, 131 ; invades Eng- 
land, 140; campaign of Hast- 



1100 



INDEX 



ings, 144-148; coronation of, 
148-150; position of, after, 150, 
151 ; London receives a charter, 
151, 244; organization of gov- 
ernment, 151, 152; confiscations 
of, 152, 153; policy, 154; re- 
duces England, 156-165; taxa- 
tion under, 170; the oath at 
Salisbury, 178; policy toward 
the church, 178-180; new con- 
ditions under, 181 ; quarrel with 
barons, 182 ; with his sons, 183 ; 
death of, 183. 
William II., Rufus, accession of, 
184; character, 185; treatment 
of the church, 186, 187 ; reunion 
of England and Normandy, 187 ; 
death of, 188. 

III., stadholder, 764; marries 
Mary of York, 767; difficulties 
of proposed invasion of Eng- 
land, 794, 795 ; invasion of Eng- 
land, 799-801 ; coi'onation of, 
803; character of, 811; difficul- 
ties of position of, 812; dealings 
with religious question, 812- 
814 ; in Ireland, 816 ; opposition 
to in Scotland, 818-820; war of 
English succession, 820-825 ; the 
partition treaties, 831, 832; 
death, 835. 

IV., accession of, 990; supports 
reform, 991 ; death of, 999. 

I., emperor of Germany, 1035. 

and Mary's war, 897. 

Clito, 196. 

Henry, Fort, erected 898, cap- 
tured by Montcalm, 904. 

Longbeard, see Fitz-Osbert. 

Longs word, see Salisbury. 

son of Henry I. , 196. 

the Lion, king of Scotland, 225, 
226, 231, 252. 

the Silent, 764. 
Williams, Roger, founds Rhode 

Island, 662. 
Wilmington, see Compton. 
Winchelsey, archbishop of Canter- 
bury, 311, 312, 336. 
Winchester, Statute of, the, 301. 
Winwood, battle of, 42. 



Witenagemot, defined, 28, 91, 111, 
128, 168, 169. 

Wolfe, general, captures Quebec, 
907. 

Wolsey, Thomas, minister of Henry 
VIII., 514, 516; diplomatic tri- 
umphs of , 516, 517; relations t( 
Francis I. and Charles V., 520, 
decline of popularity of, 521, 

/ 522; reforms of, 522, 523; sup- 

s- ports Heniy VIII., in seeking 
divorce, 524 ; fall of, 525 ; death, 
526, 527. 

Wood's Pence, 860. 

Woodville, Anthony, lord Scales 
earl Rivers, 479, death of, 488 
Sir Richard, earl Rivers, treas- 
urer and constable of England 
479, death of, 480. 
Elizabeth, marries Edward IV., 
478; family of, overthrown b- 
Richard III., 488, 489. 

Worcester, battle of, 715. 

Worms, diet of, 519. 

Wren, Sir Chi'lstopher, plans of, fo 
upbuilding London, 857. 

Wulfhere, 42, 49, 50. 

Wyat, Sir Thomas, earl of Suffolk, 
578. 

Wyclif , John, 394 ; theories of social 
order, 395 ; trial of, 396 ; his re- 
forms, 398, 399, 411-413. 

Wykeham, William of, bishop of 
Winchester, minister of Ed- 
ward III., 391, 394, 419, 437. 

York, monastery of, 64. 
Edmund, duke of, 415. 
Richard, duke (Sf, 457, 463; re- 
turn, 464 ; seizes control o^ gov- 
erment, 465; in war of the 
Roses, 466-471; slain, 471. 
Yorktown, capitulation of, 939. 
Young, Arthur, secretary of board 
of agriculture, 917. 
Ireland party, the, 1011, 1018. 

Zollverein, 1035. 

Zulus, war with the, 1053. 

Zutphen, battle of, 607. 



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